The irrepressible flat-capped 79-year-old, who made his millions from holiday camps in Britain, could not believe his luck on Saturday when his young stayer Many Clouds made him the first owner in more than a century to boast three different Grand National winners. Yet barely had Hemmings, also owner of 2005 winner Hedgehunter and 2011 champion Ballabriggs, been able to take in his outlandish success at Aintree when he was looking towards his next sporting dream.
As owner of Preston North End, the football club he has supported since he was a boy, Hemmings is desperate to see the famous old League One side promoted next month to the Championship, the second tier of the English game.
Hemmings’ victory news conference on Saturday, to some amusement, kept being interrupted by text messages alerting him to the latest score in Preston’s top-of-the-table match against leaders Bristol City.
He ended up pronouncing his contentment with a 1-1 draw.
“Preston was where I grew up and when the club got into difficulties, I was asked if I could help and I did. I kept financing it and became the owner," he said.
“I’m hoping that effort’s going to be rewarded by us being promoted but you can’t say you're going up until you get to the line -- just like here at Aintree!”
Hemmings’s story is a classic rags to riches tale of an apprentice bricklayer who went on to own Pontins holiday camps and even the iconic Blackpool Tower. Racing was always a passion.
“Three Grand Nationals? Somebody’s looking down on me,” he said. “Two, you think ‘God, that’s something special’ but three? You just can’t believe it.” Now, he joked, he just needed one more.
He bought Many Clouds for 6,000 euros ($6,400) and the horse has won 740,000 pounds this year alone -- yet he might not even have run if Hemmings had not urged trainer Oliver Sherwood, dismayed by the horse’s Cheltenham Gold Cup run, to gamble.
(Editing by Ed Osmond)
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