Superb horseman Grant Cann dies at 83

An outstanding figure in West Country racing and point-to-pointing, Grant Cann, died on Friday at the age of 83.

A brilliant amateur rider and later a small-scale, but successful licensed trainer, he partnered many high-class horses in a riding career of some 20 years and won the Cheltenham Festival’s National Hunt Chase in 1969 on Lizzy The Lizard. Six years later he landed Stratford’s John Corbet Cup – the season’s leading race for novice hunter chasers – on the Oliver Carter-trained Otter Way, and the following year the partnership went back to the same course  and won the prestigious Horse & Hound Cup (now Pertemps Champion Hunters’ Chase), beating two top-notch horses in Stanhope Street and False Note. The last-named had won that season’s Foxhunters’ Chase at Cheltenham.

As a trainer he sent out Mrs Be to win the 2005 Horse & Hound Cup under Polly Gundry, 12 years after calling upon Polly Curling to ride Friendly Lady when she won the same racecourse’s John Corbet Cup. He trained his final point-to-point winner in 2014 when his step-daughter, Amanda Bush, rode How’s My Friend to victory at Woodford.

Cann’s widow, Ollie, was a successful point-to-point trainer in her own right, handling such multiple winners as John Daniell, Dennis The Legend and Vinnie Boy. She said: “Grant was a very clever man who had a brilliant eye and knew when a horse was cherry ripe. One of his favourite sayings was ‘We’re at 12 o’clock now’ meaning we’re spot on. Owners would come to the yard and ask if their horse was at 12 o’clock.

“He had become quite ill in the past month, but his face would light up when we talked horses. We sought advice from a financial advisor [earlier this year] and Grant announced I’m going to have two or three young horses. I’m going to Anthony Honeyball’s to see what he’s got.

“He came back saying, ‘I didn’t really see anything I liked’, and then the next thing I heard him on the phone to Anthony saying ‘I’ll have that one’.” ‘That one’ is an unraced three-year-old, who regretfully Cann will not see race.

Grant Cann, outstanding amateur rider and successful trainer

A son of licensed trainer Jack Cann, Jack Grant Cann, who used his middle name to differentiate from his father, announced himself to followers of racing in 1962 as a 19-year-old when riding a pair of doubles at Exeter’s important Whitsun weekend meeting, at that time one of a series of summer fixtures in the West Country which drew leading jockeys to the region. Riding for various stables, but primarily for his father, he went on to ride 65 winners under rules, none classier than What A Myth.

Stabled in Sussex with the five-time champion jumps trainer Ryan Price – who later became a Classic-winning Flat trainer – What A Myth was a talented performer – winner of the Whitbread (now Bet365) Gold Cup at Sandown – whose career, at the age of 11 , was on the downgrade. Price sent the horse hunting in a bid to restore his enthusiasm for the chase, and the following season, in 1969, contacted his old friend Jack Cann and booked his son to ride the now 12-year-old in a Market Rasen hunters’ chase. They duly won and followed up a week later in a hunters’ chase at Newbury (painting of the pair at top of page), priming What A Myth for a crack at the Cheltenham Gold Cup. He won that too, under Price’s stable jockey Paul Kelleway.

The Hunter Chasers & Point-to-Pointers annual of 1970, published by Geoffrey Sale, said of What A Myth: “A top-class performer and hardly fair game for hunter chasers – particularly with Grant Cann up.”

Point-to-pointing during Cann’s time in the saddle was a largely parochial sport with a season that started in February, ended in May and did not involve racing on Sundays. Despite that he amassed 217 point-to-point winners and would have been national men’s champion on at least two occasions had he not been competing in the era of the nearly invincible David Turner, son of Joe Turner whose East Anglian yard was by far the most productive source of winners for much of that time.

Cann’s final point-to-point winner, home-bred How’s My Friend (Amanda Bush) (Photograph: Tim Holt)

The aforementioned Otter Way, who won the 1976 Whitbread Gold Cup under top professional jockey Jeff King, was one of a number of winners that Cann partnered for Devon permit holder Oliver Carter, another being Lucky Rock, who provided the duo with seven point-to-point wins in 1977. Other good horses Cann rode included such multiple winners as Westerly Winds, Weensland Lad, Village Mark, Star Express and Macnabs Quest. In 1983, soon after he was forced to quit race riding due to a shoulder injury, he was presented with an award for special services to the sport at the national dinner.

A horseman who learned his craft from his father, Cann was a leading voice in calling for the dolling off of fences, a wish which finally came to fruition in 1995. Two years before that Polly Curling, the three-time women’s national champion, rode the Cann-owned-and-trained Friendly Lady to victory in the John Corbet Cup. She said: “He was a very shrewd trainer who knew his horses inside and out, and to mind was brilliant with mares. You rode exactly how he told you to ride, and if you didn’t he’d let you know. We talked a lot about horses, and he was always worth listening to.”

Nick Bush, who rode a number of winners for Cann, said: “He was a very talented trainer who could get his horses very well and very fit. He wasn’t a communicator, but he told you what he thought and when he gave advice it was worth listening to. He taught me to ride a number of West Country courses. To ride as many winners as he did, given the make-up of the season at that time, was a big achievement. You can’t do that if you’re a flash in the pan.”