In the first of a series celebrating his celluloid obsession, our new movie correspondent revisits the inspirational Grand National story of Aldaniti and Bob Champion, a horse and jockey who both came back from the brink to score at Aintree.
Jay Hovdey is known for writing about horses – but he also fancies himself a movie critic. In fact, he can bore a listener to tears with opinions about the cinema, as he calls it, and his never-ending list of personal film favorites (do not get him started on Sam Peckinpah, or Barbara Stanwyck).
In an effort to channel his impulses, Thoroughbred Racing Commentary is offering Hovdey a chance to recall his favorite horse racing movies, with the promise he will provide added value from someone who had something to do with the subject at hand. So here we go.
Champions (1984)
directed by John Irvin; starring John Hurt
It was a chore to find Champions anywhere in my Southern California neighborhood when it was released in 1984. Even in the US, racing fans knew the movie was out there, in all its melodramatic glory, so thank goodness it was available in the relatively new technology of VHS later that same year. VHS stood for ‘video home system’.
As a result, most of the folks in my racing movie tribe have never seen Champions in the theatre, and that’s too bad. The film cries for big-screen appreciation, from its opening credits of a horse and rider galloping across a distance landscape amidst the soaring strains of composer Clive Davis and the London Philharmonic, to its climax with the intimate violence of the 1981 Grand National steeplechase over its 4½ miles, and 30 fences more unforgiving in those days than is now the case.
The race is won by Aldaniti, who was back to racing from a torn tendon, and jockey Bob Champion, who had recovered from lung and testicular cancer. However, it was not that simple.
There were vets who recommended Aldaniti be put down, and there were times Bob Champion wished for a merciful death, mentally and physically exhausted as he was from the ravages of chemotherapy. The struggles of both man and beast are played literally and without exaggeration, as verified to this day by someone who knows the score.
“I can truthfully say the movie is 90 per cent accurate,” said Bob Champion from his home in Newmarket. “The other 10 per cent you could say was the truth glamorized – which they had to do to make it worth watching.”
It is, in fact, a movie that might have been tossed onto the pile of the tearjerking, ‘too young to die’ genre populated by the likes of Love Story, Brian’s Song, and Terms of Endearment, which was released in 1983. Champions, though, was different from the maudlin crowd. They lived. And they won.
“It’s a good movie, with some very talented people,” said Champion, who wrote the book Champions Story on which the film was based alongside journalist Jonathan Powell.
Aldaniti retired from competition in 1983 but was still young and fit enough to play himself in the movie. The human cast is peppered with familiar names like Edward Woodward (the original Equalizer), Oscar winner Ben Johnson – and Kirstie Alley, who was at the dawn of her career.
As for the role of Bob Champion, his character is inhabited by John Hurt, who to that point had appeared to doting reviews in such landmark films as A Man for All Seasons and Midnight Express, but was best known for incubating an alien in his chest during a doomed space flight.
“John was a great actor, no doubt about it,” Champion said. “And a great man. So professional at whatever he did. Terry Biddlecombe, our former champion National Hunt jockey, helped John with his riding. But John did an awful lot of his own riding, although he wasn’t allowed to do the jumping because of insurance.”
In fact, it was 1976 Grand National winner John Burke who doubled for Hurt when necessary, to give the film yet another layer of authenticity.
The Champions screenplay was written by Evan Jones, who got his feet wet adapting The Racing Game for the Dick Francis mystery series on British TV, and directed by the estimable John Irvin, fresh from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the BBC and Dogs of War with Christopher Walken.
Hurt and Champion remained friends, occasionally turning up together at the races. Champion, now 74, ret
ired from riding in 1983, received honors from The Queen, and established the Bob Champion Cancer Trust, a legacy that continues to fund research and raise early detection awareness.
A video describing the work of the Trust can be found on their website at bobchampion.org.uk, accompanied by John Hurt’s narration. Hurt died in 2017, after a battle with pancreatic cancer, leaving behind such iconic film characters as Quentin Crisp, Winston Smith, John Merrick, Garrick Ollivander, and the War Doctor from the Doctor Who television series.
Bob Champion cited Phar Lap as his second favorite racing movie, and that makes sense, for much the same reason Champions retains so many fans to this day. The attention to racing, training, and riding detail – right down to the handling of tack – gives such movies an unforced integrity from which a compelling human story can emerge.
Racing, we know, is replete with fairy tales, but precious few fairytale endings. It’s a good thing, then, that Champions ended when it did, with Bob Champion and Aldaniti in heroic celebration of their 1981 Grand National triumph. One year later, while defending their title at Aintree, they fell at the first fence. They got up, none the worse, as the crowd sighed. Champion’s reaction?
“He overjumped,” Bob said. “Just one of those things.”
• Champions is easy to rent on a number of streaming services, including Amazon Prime and Vudu, for $3.99 that otherwise would be wasted on coffee.
• Visit the Bob Champion Cancer Trust website
• View all Jay Hovdey’s features in his Favorite Racehorses series
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