I had some help from up there: Kayley Woollacott on a day of high emotion
It was emotional last year and even more so this year.
What we witnessed here was a most bittersweet success. Yet thanks to the super performance of Lalor, a horse Richard Woollacott adored from the moment he first saw him, there were smiles in Aintree's winner's enclosure. There is also now good reason to look to the future with some optimism.
On Grand National eve 12 months ago, Woollacott had been understandably tearful following Lalor's 33-1 win under Richard Johnson. Six days earlier family friend James McNeile had been killed after a point-to-point accident sustained aboard a horse sent out by Woollacott's wife, Kayley, who then screamed Lalor home from afar as the couple's daughter was poorly in hospital.
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