The Cult: Red Rum

What was Red Rum thinking, as he leapt the 30th fence at Aintree and charged home in 1977? How did he feel as his tiring hind legs burst through the fence's tangled foliage, and he suddenly found himself alone and triumphant on the final straight? With a generous handful of lengths between him and his nearest challengers, the exhausted Eyecatcher and Churchtown Boy, only some unforeseen disaster could have denied him his third Grand National victory: an achievement unmatched in the history of horse racing. With hooves thundering, gargantuan muscles straining beneath his chestnut coat and his sable tail fluttering like a pennant in the wind, he charged towards the line with inevitable momentum. Urged on by jockey Tommy Stack, exhorted by the cheering of the crowd, what must have gone through Red Rum's sleek and slender head as he galloped over the finishing line?

There are many emotions we could project on to Red Rum in this moment, and when it comes to writing about horse racing anthropomorphism has long been in vogue. We could write about Red Rum's pride, relief, satisfaction and joy, all in a futile attempt to humanise a horse. The truth is that, while Red Rum brought great happiness and excitement to the British public, none of us have even the remotest clue what he was feeling or thinking in his moment of triumph. We are human beings, and he was an entirely different animal. He could have been thinking about an enormous, celestial sugar cube for all we know, and there's nothing wrong with admitting our total ignorance in that regard.

Perhaps because of humanity's long and intimate relationship with horses, we are often hopelessly romantic in the way we express their emotions and instincts. Since man invented the saddle, people have been racing on, falling off, fighting from and dying alongside our equine companions, and that gives them a certain distinction in our eyes which leads us to endow them with human traits. So the legendary jockey A.P. McCoy once described the Grand National course on which Red Rum made his name as "the ultimate test of a horse's courage." But do horses feel anything akin to courage, or are they merely compelled to do our bidding by artificial obstacles and the sting of a riding crop? While McCoy may have spent long enough around horses to feel a close emotional connection to them, he has never shared a brain with one, and as such not even he can say.

Of course, the essential futility of humanising a horse has never stopped people from trying. The treatment of Red Rum, both during his life and afterwards, exemplifies this in the most surreal of ways. Having become the most famous and celebrated animal in the country after winning the Grand National in 1973, 1974 and 1977 – finishing second in both races in the interim – Red Rum soon found himself being asked to inaugurate supermarkets, parades and rollercoasters at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. In the year he won his final Grand National, he 'switched on' the Blackpool Illuminations using a special pedal designed for his hooves, and subsequently appeared as a studio guest in front of a live audience on the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year.

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