Cann, Grant

Grant Cann

Article by Chris Pitt

Grant Cann was a top west country amateur rider in the 1960s and early 1970s, riding a total of 65 winners under National Hunt Rules including the 1969 National Hunt Chase at Cheltenham on Lizzy The Lizard.

The son of Collumpton, Devon trainer Jack Cann, Jack Grant Cann – always known by his second Christian name to differentiate him from his father – was born in Tiverton on August 23, 1942 and made an amazing start to his riding career, riding his first four winners at Devon & Exeter’s 1962 Whitsun meeting, registering doubles on both days.

His first winner was on Les Kennard’s Rolling Rapture in the Bidford Chase on Saturday, June 9, 1962, then one hour later he won a novice hunters’ chase on Rising Way. On the Bank Holiday Monday, he scored again on Rolling Rapture and also won a novices’ chase on Master Jim.

He rode five winners the following season and two the one after that, but raised his tally to eight in 1964/65. Half of those victories were achieved on Weensland Lad, who won two hunter chases and two 3m 1f Newton Abbot handicap chases, including the Torquay Hotels Association Challenge Bowl by eight lengths.

Grant and Weensland Lad combined to win five races early in the 1965/66 campaign at the south-west tracks, dead-heating with Nick Gaselee’s mount Staggered at Wincanton in the last of them. At the back end of the season he rode three winners at Devon & Exeter’s 1966 Whitsun fixture and won three times on Ted Fisher’s novice chaser Golden Spirit II, all of which helped him achieve a score of 12

for the season.

He equalled that tally in 1968/69, the highlight being the triumph of Lizzy The Lizard in the National Hunt Chase (left) for amateur riders at Cheltenham on March 18. On a somewhat lesser scale, Grant also won that season’s Charles Vicary Memorial Challenge Cup Chase at Newton Abbot aboard Pharaoh Hophra, trained by his father.

But Lizzy The Lizard wasn’t the best horse he rode during the spring of 1969. Not by a long chalk. The top-class chaser What A Myth, by then 12 years old, had been sent hunting to rekindle his enthusiasm by his highly astute trainer Ryan Price. Grant rode What A Myth to victory on his comeback run in a Market Rasen hunters’ chase on March 1 and then followed up at Newbury seven

days later. Next time out, reunited with his regular pilot Paul Kelleway, 48 hours after Grant had won the National Hunt Chase, What A Myth (right) revelled in the heavy ground, battling on up the hill to win that year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup by a length and a half from Domacorn.

Grant’s name appeared on racecourse number boards less often over the ensuing years and he never again rode more than three winners in a season. Nonetheless he achieved two notable victories towards the end of his

riding career, courtesy of Oliver Carter’s hunter chaser Otter Way, on whom Grant won Stratford’s John Corbett Cup – the most prestigious race for novice hunters – in 1975, and the Horse and Hound Cup Final Champion Hunters’ Chase (left) at the same course on June 5, 1976.