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| Aintree Grand National 2011 |
Comply Or Die Earns Honourable Retirement
21/04/11
David Pipe has announced that his 2008 John Smith’s Grand National winner Comply Or Die has been retired after being pulled up in this year’s renewal of the Aintree marathon, writes Elliot Slater.
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The 12-year-old gelding had been struggling to show his best form for over a year but hopes were fairly high that one last return to Aintree when he shocked horse race betting fans while enjoying his finest moment in defeating King John’s Castle in 2008 before finding only shock 100/1 scorer Mon Mome too good for him in the 2009 renewal might spark him into the best of his old form, but it wasn’t to be.
David Johnson’s charge lost touch before the Canal Turn on the second circuit and regular jockey Timmy Murphy, (the man who guided him to his famous big race success in 2008 and went so close to repeating the feat a year later), decided that enough was enough and rightly pulled him up before the fourth last. It didn’t take connections long to decide that the son of Old Vic has run his last race and he will now head off into the sunset and spend the rest of his day’s at Timmy Murphy’s farm in Gloucestershire.
A winner of 8 of his 31 starts (good percentages for horse betting tips) and just a few pounds short of £800,000 in total career prize money, Comply Or Die was a winner in Grade 2 company as a novice hurdler at Cheltenham in 2004 before making the successful transition to chasing. In 2008 he land the gruelling Eider Chase before going on to his greatest moment at Aintree, but his last big effort was his second place in the 2009 Grand National, a performance of tremendous credit as he finished second of the 40 runners, giving Johnson, Pipe and Murphy plenty to be very proud of.
