1930 Grand National: Results, Runners & Fallers

The winner of the 1930 Grand National was Shaun Goilin, a horse that brought us a tremendous story on the racetrack and also perhaps an even more fascinating one off the track.

Winning in 1930, he would be part of one of the greatest Grand National finishes of all time and one that remains as one of the closest finishes ever in the race.

Shaun Goilin was an Irish racehorse with an amazing backstory. He was kept in Ireland and also trained and ridden by Irish men.

The trainer was Frank Hartigan, a man who had gone close to winning the Grand National before but never managed it. His only success in the race was this one, while he also had two second-place finishers, two third-placed finishers and two fourth-place finishers.

His Grand National record stands up as being very strong for the era, despite just one win, with how close he came on other occasions.

Winning jockey was Tommy Cullinan, who would also have just one success in the National, while he was second in 1928, the only other time he completed the course.

If you believe the stories afterwards, Cullinan would receive a cheque for £1000 from owner Walter Midwood, our of the £5000 first prize he picked up for his services on the day.

After the race, during interviews, Cullinan paid great tribute to the horse, saying he didn’t make a mistake until the end of the race and was travelling as well as anything around him throughout. However, he did lose an iron with two fences to go and never regained it, meaning he rode out the last fence, plus the finish, with just one iron in the saddle.

Forty-one runners would begin the race on good ground, but only six of them managed actually to complete the course, which was a surprise. The time was very quick for the race, which was usually run in over 10 minutes. The winner recorded a time of 9 minutes 40 seconds.

Had the ground been better on the day, this race would have been close to the course record.

Shaun Goilin was well supported before the race and would begin as second favourite behind Grakle, who would win the race a year later in 1931. The story goes that much of the money pushing the price down on Shaun Goilin was Irish, with many people backing the Irish trio combination, or horse, trainer and jockey all being Irish.

Shaun Goilin – The Horse with No Sire

Despite all of the above leading to a bigger Grand National story than some years on the course, it was the story of the course and the start to life of Shaun Goilin that really made his win stand out.

He is known as the horse without a sire, and on official registration records, his sire is down as being ‘unknown’ due to an incident on a paddock in Ireland.

Foaled in 1920 at the Rathduff Stud, County Tipperary, the lack of knowledge around his breeding would, at the time, mean he was sold on very cheap during his early days, for just 22 Guineas as a two-year-old.

Golden Day, the dam of Shaun Goilin, was reportedly stabled in her paddock with no intention of breeding any time soon, next to her was a paddock that was home to three colts.

It is reported that one of those colts jumped the fence into the same paddock as Shaun Goilin and sired who would become a future Grand National winner.

There was no way of confirming which of the three had sired the horse and no 100% confirmation that it was one of those three, however, all other possibilities were deemed to be almost impossible.

At the time, John Edwards, who owned the stud, said that the horse responsible for breeding Shaun Goilin was a horse named Shaun Aboo, though this could never be confirmed.

Officially, things were never looked at any further to find more out, and of course, testing was incredibly limited at the time, so the horse went down into records as having an unknown sire.

He would become a Grand National champion later, and the story would grow to be one of the biggest in racing at the time.

Results

Non Finishers