Three Grand Nationals. No other horse has won more than two.
Why that is difficult
The Grand National is run over four and a quarter miles with thirty fences. Attrition is the defining feature of the race. In most runnings, well under half the field completes the course.
Red Rum ran it five consecutive times, from 1973 to 1977, and finished first, first, second, second, first. He never fell and never failed to complete.
The foot
He was diagnosed with pedal osteitis, an inflammatory bone condition in the foot that ordinarily ends a jumping career. He was bought at Doncaster sales by Ginger McCain, a Southport trainer whose yard was behind a used car showroom and who had no conventional gallops.
McCain worked him on the beach and in the sea. The salt water and cold appear to have resolved what the veterinary options had not.
1973
The Australian horse Crisp, carrying twelve stone, made all the running and led by a margin variously described as around thirty lengths turning for home. He was still in front at the last fence.
Red Rum, receiving twenty-three pounds, pursued him up the long run-in and caught him inside the final fifty yards, winning by three quarters of a length.
The time, 9 minutes 1.9 seconds, was a record for the race and stood until 1990.
1974 to 1977
He won again in 1974 under top weight of twelve stone, and completed a Scottish Grand National the same season, a double nobody had achieved.
He was second to L'Escargot in 1975 and second to Rag Trade in 1976.
In 1977, aged twelve, he won a third time by twenty-five lengths. Peter O'Sullevan's commentary on the run-in is among the best known pieces of British sports broadcasting.
Retirement
He was withdrawn on the eve of the 1978 National with a hairline fracture and retired immediately.
He spent the next seventeen years as a public figure, opening premises, appearing at events, and leading the Aintree parade annually. He died in 1995 at the age of thirty and is buried at the Aintree winning post.
Why it goes on a wall
Because a horse with a bone disease in his foot, trained on a beach by a man who sold cars, went round the hardest steeplechase in the world five times without falling and won three of them.
Five starts, three wins, two seconds.