The family bidding to end 70 years of heartbreak in one of Britain's most distinctive races

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This really is the time of year to rejoice in the idiosyncratic oddity of British racing, to revel in peculiar anachronisms you simply don’t get anywhere else. 

Last weekend we had two Guineas run over a completely straight mile, races named after a financial unit of currency which was replaced in the “great recoinage” of 1816 – although to be fair that was just after they were first run.

This Friday we have another unique contest that has been going for more than 200 years in the Chester Cup.

• Confirmed runners and riders for the Ladbrokes Chester Cup on Friday 

Imagine explaining to a foreign audience the appeal of a 17-runner race around two circuits of the tightest course in the country, with traffic problems inevitable and those drawn high needing an act of god – or Franny Norton, who won from 16 on the aptly named Making Miracles a few years ago.

Yet even that pales as an example of inexplicable eccentricity compared to the course about to stage its most prestigious race of the year: a maiden hunter chase. 

Admittedly, it is the richest maiden hunter chase in the calendar, thanks to a cash injection taking the prize-money up to £8,000. But that honour is slightly akin to being the tallest man in Lilliput. 

Yet the Heart Of All England Maiden Hunter Chase, now sponsored by agricultural machinery firm Paxtons, has been hotly contested ever since it was introduced at Hexham in 1907. People really want to win it and this year's race has attracted a field of 11.

Great Notions (far) edged out Wallace Olinger in last year's Heart Of All EnglandCredit: Grossick Racing (racingpost.com/photos)

Trying to explain the appeal, the course's assistant manager Sean Tasker-Brown says: "Some of those with runners on Saturday will only have one or two horses and it gives them the chance to run in a historic race, it's a big thing for them.

"In many hunter chases you have former handicappers rated 140-odd, dropping down in class, but you don't get that as it's a maiden. 

"Most National Hunt fans have the Grand National or the Gold Cup as their favourite race but mine has always been the Heart Of All England." 

Of course, Tasker-Brown is a Northumbrian and not an unbiased observer. But the Front Runner well remembers the joy all over Lord Daresbury’s face on the day of Frankel’s 2,000 Guineas back in 2011, when we both found ourselves at Hexham and he finally won a race he’d been aiming for since his riding days in the mid-1970s. 

His son Oliver Greenall, now a Cheltenham Festival-winning trainer, was on board Bitter Blue that evening, when runner-up Impact Zone was partnered by Jo Mason, then an up-and-coming point-to-point rider but now a leading northern Flat jockey.

She and Impact Zone went one place better at Hexham the following year, when John Dawson was second – the first of seven placings in the race before the prolific point winner finally, joyously took the prize last year. 

John Dawson being interviewed after his win in last year's Heart Of All EnglandCredit: Grossick Racing (racingpost.com/photos)

But that is as nothing compared to the wait endured by the Waltons, a local farming family who have been trying to win the race since 1956 and had no fewer than 16 horses placed in that time. 

Jimmy Walton, now the course chairman, went close in 1985 and 1986 on no less a chaser than Mighty Mark, who went on to land the Scottish Grand National.

His big hope for the Heart this year is Eastern Storm, who has won his last four point-to-points and looks to have very strong claims on Saturday.

However, word is that the chairman does not really care for interviews. He does not want to jinx his chance and will do his talking if the horse finally ends a 70-year wait for success on Saturday.

The Walton family silks will be carried by Eastern Storm at Hexham on SaturdayCredit: Grossick Racing (racingpost.com/photos)

 So the Front Runner turns to the man who appears to be his main rival. Dale Peters has already gone close twice before and hopes to make it third time lucky with Line Em Up.

"Line Em Up has gone through the grades really well this year," says the man who both trains and rides the seven-year-old. 

"Eastern Storm looks the one to beat but I wouldn't swap him. 

"You can ride him any which way, I was a bit out of my ground last time and he was fine, or you can ride him handy. It will be his first time over regulation fences but I don't think that will be a problem, he's a big lad." 

Peters, who rode his 199th point winner last weekend, was beaten just a head into second place on Wallace Olinger last year.

Dale Peters (right): has gone close in the race before

"That was annoying," he recalls. "Had it been a point-to-point I'd have won it but he struggles with his jumping and fences under rules make it more of a test. And I fell two out on Ballinahow Bill in 2018 when I think he'd probably have won." 

Peters, 36, is an East Anglian. He is based in Sawtry, just north of Huntingdon, and was selected to join the Ipswich Town FC youth academy at 13.

Yet this prize means just as much to him as it does to the locals. He faces a journey of possibly four and a half hours each way on Saturday yet says: "I want to win the Heart Of All England. It's a big one in amateur ranks. It's on my bucket list to do before I pack up riding, I'll keep trying until I do."

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