Caughoo, in hindsight, could, and probably should, have started near favourite for the 1947 Grand National.
Instead, it was allowed to start at 100/1 and romped home in the style of an odds-on favourite.
How did this come about?
The English winter of that year was one of the coldest ever: the term 'The Big Freeze' is usually associated with those months. English horses had been confined to their stables for over two months as the National loomed. Inactive and consequently unfit, 56 ill-prepared horses lined up for the 1947 renewal. The 57th horse in the line-up was Caughoo.
Having had the benefit of regular workouts on the snow-free beach of Sutton Strand, near Dublin, Caughoo came to Aintree jumping out of its skin, by far the fittest horse in the field.
The owners' choice of jockey - Eddie Dempsey, totally unknown outside England - also helped inflate Caughoo's price.
Born in Co. Meath in 1911, Eddie's riding experience had been confined to working horses on the gallops and he was almost 30 before he got the leg-up on anything half decent, the wonderfully bred Prince Regent.
In 1941, Eddie rode the Tom Dreaper-trained star to a neck victory in the Enniskerry Hurdle at Phoenix Park, Dublin.
After, later that year, Eddie and Prince Regent had also won the Webster Champion Cup Chase, he was immediately replaced by more fashionable jockeys who jointly rode the horse to four more victories that season.
Eddie, though having proved he could ride with the best, was forced back to scraping a living riding work and getting the occasional ride.
In December, 1946, one such ride was on a six year old gelding called Caughoo.
Named after an Irish village, Caughoo had been jointly bought for 50 guineas by Herbert McDowell, a vet, and his brother John, a jeweller.
The brothers decided to aim Caughoo at the 1946 Ulster Grand National at Downpatrick which the horse had won the year before.
Trained by the elder brother Henry, Caughoo - ridden by Eddie - did well in its prep races and was well on course for the big race. Then, disaster! Eddie took a crashing fall. He was out for several months and the fortunate Audrey Brabazon came in for the ride. As expected, Caughoo won easily.
This was no 100/1 Aintree Grand National shot!
In 1947, the McDowell brothers decided against going for a hat-trick in the 1947 Ulster National. Caughoo had become listless, perhaps bored, and the McDowell's decided a change of scenery was called for to re-energise the horse.
I digress for a sentence to relate that the then Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, suggested to course owner Mrs Topham that the National should be run on a Saturday 'in the interests of British industry'.
So Saturday, March 29, 1947, dawned, but so thick was the fog that many thought the race might be postponed. It wasn't, and, in the near invisible conditions, 57 runners - including the super fit Caughoo - set off into the mire.
Understandably, there were, nor could be, any accurate race commentaries: save to say that, coming out of the mist, Caughoo was miles clear. Eddie - paying his first visit to England - and Caughoo won in a common canter by twenty lengths.
Some years later, Eddie ran into Daniel McCann, who had come second to Caughoo on Lough Conn.
McCann promptly accused Eddie of cheating by taking a short cut in the fog. The two men came to blows: this settled nothing and, incredibly, McCann took Eddie to court with his outrageous claim. He expressed his view that Eddie had 'lingered' at the 12th until the runners had come round again before rejoining the field.
The judges, unsurprisingly, found for Eddie, throwing out McCann's somewhat spurious claim.
Many years later, Eddie fell on hard times; in an effort to raise funds he sold his 'story' to a Sunday tabloid, admitting that he had cheated. He said that, in the fog, he had 'hidden behind a haystack' until rejoining the runners on the second circuit.
There were no haystacks at Aintree that day.
Eddie retired from riding at the end of 1950. Aged 77, he died some 39 years later.