The Chair (Aintree Racecourse)

The Chair (Aintree Racecourse)

The Chair is a fence on Aintree Racecourse's National Course and thus is one of 30 that are jumped during the Grand National steeplechase which is held annually at the racecourse near Liverpool, England.

It is the 15th fence that runners jump and is one of only two (the other being the 16th, the Water Jump) in the race to be negotiated only once.

Positioned in front of the grandstand, it is the tallest fence in the race, at 5ft 3in, preceded by a 6ft open ditch on the takeoff side. The Chair is also comfortably the narrowest fence on the Grand National course, bar the Water Jump. The landing side of The Chair fence is actually 6 in above the ground on the takeoff side, creating the reverse of Becher's Brook, meaning the ground effectively comes up to meet horse and rider quicker than anticipated.

Generally it is jumped fairly safely by most horses in the Grand National field, probably due to the lengthy run they have before reaching the fence, and because, by the time the fence is approached, most of the runners have settled into a smooth running rhythm. However, it regularly claims fallers, not just in the Grand National but other races held over the course. Perhaps The Chair's most notorious pile up occurred during the 1979 Grand National, won by Rubstic. Two loose horses veered across the main body of the field and contributed to the falls or refusals of nine horses, including Kintai who had to be euthanised as a result of injuries sustained when he was brought down. For the following year's race, in which Ben Nevis returned and won after becoming one of the victims in the aforementioned pile-up, channels were installed around the fence so that loose horses reluctant to negotiate the obstacle were able to bypass it rather than jump over it. There has been no equine fatality in the Grand National at The Chair since 1979, and only three since the race was founded in 1839.

The fence has caught out numerous Grand National winners over the years, including Russian Hero (1951), Ayala (1964), Rubstic (1980) and Silver Birch (2006).

The Chair receives its name from the chair once sited alongside the fence, at which a distance judge would sit when races used to be run in heats. Horses that tailed off too far were disqualified from later heats.