2001 Grand National - Media Coverage

Media Coverage

The BBC retained the rights to broadcast the race live on terrestrial television in the United Kingdom as they had done every year since 1960. BBC One's Saturday afternoon sports show Grandstand covered the race as a Grand National special, which began at 12:45pm BST and was presented by Sue Barker and Clare Balding. This consisted of race build-up, with previews of the main contenders, interviews with connections of the runners, and celebrity spectators, as well as nostalgic segments from the history of the race, while Angus Loughran provided regular updates on the betting market.

As they race up now towards the elbow it's Red Marauder who's out in front. Battling on in second is Smarty. Looking well back down the track to try and find Papillon who's been remounted... This is a famous victory for Red Marauder and Richard Guest. Up on the run-in now. The cheers of the crowd, they are applauding a very brave horse and a great rider. It's a great ride by Richard Guest to go on and win the Grand National on Red Marauder. Red Marauder comes home, alone.

“ ” Commentator Jim McGrath describes the climax of the race

In addition to the race itself the programme also broadcast live coverage of three other races on the Aintree card — the Cordon Bleu Handicap Hurdle, the Martell Maghull Novices Steeplechase and the Martell Aintree Hurdle, none of which were run over the Grand National course. The commentator for the these races was Jim McGrath, who also called home the winner of the National where he was joined by a commentary team of John Hanmer and Tony O'Hehir (however O'Hehir played no part in the commentary of the race as rain caused a power failure at his commentary position at Becher's Brook). Hanmer, whose role was to commentate on the runners over the first four fences and the last three along the Canal side of the course took over and continued commentary of both circuits from fences one to 12 and 17 to 28. McGrath continued his normal commentary of the race as on the racecourse proper.

48 cameras were used to film the action, including inside two jockeys' caps and some inside fences. The majority of these shots were used in a detailed post-race re-run with Richard Pitman and Peter Scudamore. The BBC's coverage was also syndicated across the world for live coverage in China, the United States, Canada and large parts of Europe and Asia for an estimated global viewing audience of 650 million people during the eleven minutes of the race itself.

BBC Radio covered the race for the 59th time since its first broadcast in 1927 and was part of its Five Live Sports broadcast hosted by Mark Pougatch. The radio commentary team was headed by Peter Bromley who had announced that this would be his last commentary of the National, his first having been in 1960. He was joined by Lee McKenzie, Cornelius Lysaght and Dave Smith.

The race was also streamed live on the Internet using BBC pictures to an undisclosed audience.