National Hunt jockey George Spann was born at The Wirral on June 14, 1916, the son of a stud groom. He was apprenticed to Morgan Blair at Ewhurst, Surrey, and rode over jumps between 1932 and 1954.
He rode mainly for Tom Yates and Sonny Hall, to whom he was also assistant trainer, and registered his best score with 11 winners in the 1936/37 season. His career was interrupted by the war but he returned to the saddle when hostilities ended.
He enjoyed a lucrative spring in 1950, riding six winners within as many weeks, including an Easter Monday double at Towcester on Highwayman and Brown Jack III for Tom Yates. He repeated the feat twelve months later, notching another Towcester Easter Monday double on Wansford and Southwick. The following month, Southwick gave him his biggest success when winning the 1951 County Hurdle at Cheltenham, run that year in April because the last two days of the National Hunt Meeting had been abandoned due to a waterlogged course.
Later that year George started training at Russley Park, near Marlborough. His best horse was Polar Flight, who won the Broadway Novices’ (now RSA) Chase at the 1956 Cheltenham Festival and reached his peak in the 1957/58 season, when he won five races, including the Fred Withington Chase at Cheltenham and the Mildmay Memorial Chase at Sandown. He also came within a length of winning that season’s Cheltenham Gold Cup, finishing runner-up to Linwell.
George enjoyed his best season numerically in 1957/58 with 11 winners. In 1959 he moved to Faringdon Road Stables, Lambourn, where he trained the brilliant two-miler Flame Gun towards the end of his career, winning Sandown’s Express Chase with him in 1962. He also trained La Ina, winner of the Holman Cup at Cheltenham in 1968 and runner-up in the following year’s Topham Trophy.
George retired in from training in 1970 and sold his yard to Stan Mellor. He moved to Ireland and founded Grangegodden House Stud in Kells, County Meath, and gained his greatest success as a breeder with More So, winner of the Irish 1,000 Guineas in 1978.
He eventually returned to his place of birth, dying at The Wirral in May 1994 at the age of 77.