Terry Casey

William Terence Casey, racehorse trainer: born Downings, Co Donegal 2 June 1945; married; died Barrington, Somerset 24 July 2001.

TALENT CANNOT always be judged by record books alone. By winning the 1996 Grand National with Rough Quest, Terry Casey achieved what can fairly be described as the pinnacle of any National Hunt trainer's career. But it was a frustratingly rare success at the top level for a man widely regarded as having the ability but rarely the opportunity to compete with the best.

Rough Quest, a 10-year-old when he won at Aintree, perfectly demonstrated that if the raw materials were good enough, then so was Casey. For much of his career, when in the hands of other trainers, Rough Quest was highly regarded but something of an under-achiever, a horse whose apparent lack of enthusiasm for a fight at the finish led some disgruntled punters to doubt his genuineness.

Rather than shrug his shoulders and curse the horse, Casey dug a little deeper than his predecessors. He established that Rough Quest was suffering from an enzyme deficiency that saw him "tie up" in the closing stages of his races. The horse's muscles were cramping, causing him to hang left in a finish.

Once that problem was identified, Rough Quest began to fulfil his immense promise. Months before the National, he won the valuable Racing Post Chase at Kempton under a very favourable weight, followed by what appeared to be a very ambitious assault on the Cheltenham Gold Cup. It proved to be a justifiable decision. Running the best race of his life, Rough Quest finished a four-length second to the Irish-trainer winner Imperial Call.

Because the Grand National is a handicap, where horses are set a weight according to their ability, and because those weights were set before the Gold Cup was run, Rough Quest appeared to be on a very appealing mark for Aintree. He had to carry 10st 7lb; had his subsequent Gold Cup run been taken into account, his weight would have been nearer 12st.

On Cheltenham form, it was hard to see Rough Quest being beaten. He wasn't. Despite hanging left again at the finish (he had never run over a distance nearly as far or as gruelling as the four and a half miles of the Grand National), which led to a 15-minute inquiry into whether he had hampered the runner-up Encore Un Peu, few horses have won the Grand National with the authority of Rough Quest.

After such a headline-grabbing success, it was widely assumed that Casey would be sent more horses to train at the Dorking stables he leased from Rough Quest's owner Andrew Wates. But the extra business never came his way. Although down-to-earth and highly approachable, Casey lacked the self-promotional skills that trainers now need to prosper.

He began his racing life as an apprentice jockey in Ireland before moving to Britain in the mid-1970s. He rode 46 winners in all, including a hurdles success on Grittar, who went on to win the 1982 Grand National.

Switching his emphasis to training, Casey led a peripatetic life-style, first working as head lad to the renowned Paddy Mullins in Ireland, then training his first winner in his own name in 1983, before switching to Britain to help the businessman John Upson set up his own stables in Northampton. During that period Casey trained two notable jumpers in Nick the Brief and Over the Road, one of two winners for him at the prestigious Cheltenham Festival.

Casey married in 1975 but his wife Elizabeth died six months after their wedding. He later had a long-term partner, Johanna Williams, who helped him greatly in his attempts to beat throat cancer, which was first diagnosed in 1999.

Although still fighting the disease, Casey was on hand to greet his final winner, Ibis Rochelais, at Folkestone in May this year.

Richard Griffiths