Racing: Ten years after and the farce runs on

They never made the movie Carry On Through The Canal Turn about the 1993 Grand National. But they might have. Someone like Windsor Davies would have been excellent as Captain Keith "Cock Up" Brown, the hapless bowler-hatted starter who officiated over a farrago of mishaps.

It was a decade ago, The Race That Never Was, yet it is still recalled with embarrassment by the horseracing fraternity. For some, particularly those who know they will probably only ever get one chance to claim steeplechasing's greatest handicap prize, a residue of irritation remains.

John Upson, a self-made entrepreneur, had made his fortune in property and house-building, but at the beginning of the Nineties had established himself as a trainer at Highfield House, in Adstone, near Towcester. He had already won the Irish Hennessy Gold Cup Chase twice with Nick The Brief, and now had Zeta's Lad, owned by his then principal patron, Andrew Cohen, tuned to a perfect pitch for the '93 National.

"It wasn't pie in the sky," the perpetually cigar-inhaling Upson, 59, recalls. "He was unbeaten in five runs that year, and was at the top of his form. Everything just seemed right, right weight [10st 4lb], right everything really." Before the "off" the 10-year-old vied for favouritism with Party Politics, the previous year's victor.

Except there was no "off". Demonstrators opposed to the running of the race initially caused a six-minute delay and that was followed by a first false start as the tape tangled around some horses who had become impatient. When the starter called them in once more, it occurred again, the tape catching around some horses' legs and jockey Richard Dunwoody's neck.

Again a false start was called, but Brown's flag did not unfurl this time, the recall man down the course did not see it, and the majority of jockeys did not hear the starter.

All but nine runners set off. At the Canal Turn the crowd waved their hands in the air and booed, to no avail. Other attempts were made to stop the runners, and eventually some pulled up. They included Zeta's Lad, partnered by Robbie Supple. But seven continued and completed the course.

Esha Ness, one of Jenny Pitman's three runners, finished first, but the features of the "victorious" rider John White were quickly frozen into a mask of disbelief when he realised what had happened.

After much discussion by the stewards the race was declared void. There would be no re-run. Upson was incandescent with rage at what had happened. "It's an absolute disgrace that the world's number one National Hunt race is run like this," he declared at the time. "It would not happen in a point-to-point field in Ireland."

A decade on, Upson is rather more sanguine. "It was a day of sheer frustration," he says. "This is a very special race and it was the only time in my life when I've had a horse with a realistic chance of winning it. And it was all just for nothing. It was something – I felt this on the day, and I haven't changed my mind about it since – which was avoidable."

He adds: "Accidents do happen, I accept that, but there were two things that I was really angry about. Firstly, the starter was absolutely obsessed with making sure every horse was in a straight line, which is unnecessary.

"But the reason I really blew my top was, that once the initial fiasco had happened, there was the starter standing there saying, 'Right, I'm disqualifying everything, apart from the nine that didn't go. I'll start the race again with nine runners'. At that stage I just thought the world had gone completely mad. The adrenalin was going and I was jumping up and down."

Even the fact that the following week Zeta's Lad finished third in the Irish Grand National was scant consolation. The next year at Aintree the system changed. Instead of the tape rising vertically, it was decided that it should ascend at 45 degrees away from the runners. Zeta's Lad, now carrying 9lb more, ran, but without the same confidence about him. He fell at the last.

This year's National start will be administered by Simon Morant. He was criticised by some for the start of the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham. But surely, such a peculiarly British blunder cannot occur again? Can it?

Upson will not have a runner. It was the end of his "glory years". Cohen took 22 horses away from him on the same day, and placed them in the hands of the now-retired Charlie Brooks and the recession hit the building trade.

Today, Upson owns nine "spit 'n' sawdust" pubs and trains 20 horses at his Glebe Stables, at the opposite end of the gallops from Highfield House. He still turns out the winners, but generally at a more modest level.

Oh, and just to mention Supple, Zeta's Lad's jockey. He retired from riding and worked as Upson's assistant for a time until taking up a new career – as a member of the Jockey Club's team of starters.