Peter Chew

CRISP AND SIR CHESTER

The Story of Australia’s Greatest Steeplechaser

Andrew Lemon

220 pages • Over 40 illustrations • Limited Edition of 200 copies • Statistics • Pedigree • Publication March 2026 • Index

ISBN: 978–1–876718–39–8

Your chance to acquire a strictly limited first edition hardback, numbered and signed by the author Andrew Lemon. Free delivery to pre-publication subscribers, who will be listed in the book.

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AUTHOR

Dr Andrew Lemon AM FRHSV is a past president of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, a novelist and multiple award-winning historian and author of the three-volume The History of Australian Thoroughbred Racing. In 2012 he was a John H. Daniels research fellow at the National Sporting Library and Museum, Middleburg, Virginia.

OVERVIEW

In a nine-year career, the magnificent Crisp starred on the international stage. Carrying top weight, he led throughout the gruelling 1973 Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree, Liverpool, lengths ahead of the field, only to be caught on the line by lightly weighted Red Rum. Together they smashed the race record by 18 seconds. After that National, Crisp and Red Rum only ever met once again, this time carrying equal weights. The Australian won by eight lengths. Objectively, Crisp was the superior. This is the story of his life and of his world.

‘You’ll never see another race like that, in a hundred years.’
(BBC Radio commentator, Peter Bromley, 31 March 1973)

‘I have never seen a horse jump like that.’
(Dick Francis, jockey, journalist and best-selling novelist)

‘Red Rum is great. But how I wish that Crisp had won.’
(George Ennor, The Sporting Life, 1 April 1973)

Crisp and Sir Chester is an epic tale, skilfully researched, beautifully told, stretching from Australia and South Carolina to Cheltenham, Aintree and Yorkshire. It is the story of Sir Chester Manifold, the Australian pastoralist and racing supremo who bred and raised Crisp, who sent his champion overseas, and dreamed of bringing him home to grow old together.

‘Defeat laid claim to the greatest ever performance by an Australian horse.’
(Australian racing journalist Matt Stewart)

It is the story, too, of champion Scottish jockey Tom McGinley, who rode Crisp in all his Australian steeplechase victories; of America’s inaugural ‘Colonial Cup’; of Crisp’s Australian trainer, Des Judd, who never trained a steeplechaser before; of Crisp’s English trainer, Fred Winter, who made jumps his specialty; and of Richard Pitman, who rode Crisp so boldly in that famous Grand National.

 

Crisp and Richard Pitman soar over the treacherous Becher’s Brook, lengths ahead of the field, in the 1973 Grand National Steeplechase, Aintree (photo: Gerry Cranham).

Crisp (Tom McGinley) preparing for the Colonial Cup, South Carolina 1970 (photo: Peter Chew)

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Royal Visit to Flemington 1954 with Sir Chester Manifold, Victoria Racing Club Chairman (Argus photo, Fairfax photo archive).