National Hunt jockey Alan Benson rode for six seasons during the first half of the 1950s and notched 12 winners under NH rules plus one on the Flat. He also rode in the Grand National.
He served his apprenticeship and spent his entire riding career with Ted Gifford, who trained firstly at Spofforth and then at Skipton, in Yorkshire, and rode his first winner – his sole success on the Flat – aboard Anschluss in the one-mile Apprentice Plate at Carlisle on June 30, 1949.
Happy Days, also trained by Gifford, was the horse who became the mainstay of Alan’s career. He provided him with his first winner over jumps in the Kimbolton Handicap Chase at Southwell on Monday, April 16, 1951, his only victory that season.
Alan won twice more on Happy Days the following season and once the next, before riding him in the 1953 Grand National. As one of the 66/1 outsiders, the 13-year-old Happy Days had little realistic chance of winning and was out of contention when falling.
Faced with the more familiar surroundings of Market Rasen, Alan and Happy Days won three races there during the 1953/54 season, the last of them on Easter Monday. In the autumn of the 1954/55 campaign, Alan won two more races on the by then 14-year-old Happy Days, the second of those victories coming in the three-mile Windermere Handicap Chase at Carlisle, a race that Red Rum was later to win three times in succession two decades later. Alan’s only other success that season came for Newmarket trainer Arthur Goodwill on selling hurdler Chalk End at Southwell in May.
He rode just one more winner, Ted Gifford’s Comeragh Chief in the St Johnstone Selling Handicap Chase at Perth on September 21, 1955. He relinquished his licence at the end of that season.
Alan Benson’s winners were, in chronological order:
1. Anschluss, Carlisle, June 30, 1949
2. Happy Days, Southwell, April 16, 1951
3. Happy Days, Market Rasen, September 22, 1951
4. Happy Days, Catterick Bridge, March 1, 1952
5. Posthumous, Sedgefield, May 17, 1952
6. Happy Days, Catterick Bridge, November 22, 1952
7. Happy Days, Market Rasen, September 19, 1953
8. Happy Days, Market Rasen, October 3, 1953
9. Happy Days, Market Rasen, April 19, 1954
10. Happy Days, Southwell, September 6, 1954
11. Happy Days, Carlisle, October 9, 1954
12. Chalk End, Southwell, May 2, 1955
13. Comeragh Chief, Perth, September 21, 1955
