Racing: Skycab hails from Gifford tradition

Horses will drop out between now and Saturday and the running of the Grand National, cremating the aspirations of some connections and punters yet fertilising the dreams of those who believe the great race has another far-fetched chapter to add to the weighty tome.

Horses will drop out between now and Saturday and the running of the Grand National, cremating the aspirations of some connections and punters yet fertilising the dreams of those who believe the great race has another far-fetched chapter to add to the weighty tome.

Skycab is not a marvellous racehorse and he is not yet in the National, but if others are removed and he does get there, the old soldier will be the target of many a sentimental shilling.

The 12-year-old would be the first runner in the grand slog for Nick Gifford, son of Josh, the trainer who almost helped to submerge the Wirral in tears when Aldaniti was successful on Merseyside in 1981. The horse was a recovered crock, his jockey Bob Champion had recovered from cancer and perhaps the only missing tearjerking element from the story was the return of a kidnapped child.

Nick Gifford was only a youngster himself when Aldaniti won. The recollection of the day, though, remains starkly clear. He tells you about all this in the lounge at the Downs Stables in Findon, a fabled area in west Sussex also known as the gin and tonic room. Josh is responsible for that.

Many a journalist has been led into this chapel after an early morning on the gallops and asked if they would like a drink. From the kitchen, though, came no noise of hissing kettle. Instead it was the clunk of cubes landing in the bottom of a tumbler. The tradition continues. The residue of cigarette is tipped, almost sacrilegiously, into an ashtray built around one of Aldaniti's plates from the vital day, but there is no dirtying of the actual moment. "Even as a kid I remembered it being quite magical," Gifford says. "That frosty morning at seven o'clock with all the horses coming back from exercise. Steam everywhere.

"And then, aged 10, walking over the dew on the course with Bob, listening to them plotting where they were going to go. I got lost outside the parade ring and made my own way up to the owners and trainers' stand. The only person I recognised was my godfather, David Nicholson. During the commentary I kept tugging his sleeve to find out what was happening. When Aldaniti won the Duke literally picked me up and carried me down the stands. There was a policeman on the winner's enclosure who wouldn't let us in, but we soon elbowed past him. I understood we'd won the race but I didn't realise at the time what Bob or the horse had been through. But it was a day I will never, ever, forget. It was amazing."

Despite the pre-National limbo, trainer and horse are both waiting to go for the National 23 years on. Nick Gifford is now seen as a legitimate heir to his father. As a young man he dragged himself up to a property course in London. He should have been a surveyor, but his instincts and probably his genes told him that all he really wanted to survey were the Sussex Downs. Skycab himself was the last horse Josh Gifford trained to victory, on an emotional afternoon they used to call Whitbread day at Sandown. The old warrior worked over some mock-up fences at home on Sunday morning and the hope is that he has the same tenacious qualities which have carried another Downs Stables inmate into the placings at Aintree. "He is a spring horse and I would put him in the same bracket as Brave Highlander," Gifford said yesterday. "He used to come to life at Aintree and I expect this horse to do the same thing."

The man they call "Stretch" on account of his 6'4" frame will be sentimental just to be competing at the weekend, but it will be nothing compared to his father, Joshua Thomas Gifford MBE. For Nick Gifford the surname could have been an albatross or garland around his shoulders, but the balance on the scales is hugely positive.

"I'm thick-skinned about the whole thing," he says. "But it's a massive advantage when you're going racing and Dad's introducing me to people. He knows all the right people. The guy on the stable door who tells you to leave a particular one alone, the agent who lets him know the nice horses. Travelling head lads that bring the horses over from Ireland have a word with him. And he's a bloody good judge of a horse himself. I'd be crazy not to use him."

And when it comes to getting the family crest returned to where it belongs the Giffords appear to have the right horse. Skycab sounds like a vehicle back up to the stars.