Two weeks ago I was sent to photograph the Grand National Meeting at Aintree, Liverpool. Having covered the Cheltenham Festival 3 weeks prior, I was eager to see the comparisons between the two events as fellow photographers had told me to look forward to seeing some disgraceful behaviour on ‘Ladies Day’.

I had headed north the previous night as I was staying in Manchester with a fellow photographer who was covering all 3 days for the newspaper he works for, so I didn’t have to face a ridiculously early morning to drive to Liverpool. We arrived at Aintree and set up a spot in the photographers tent, then headed out to get our bearings around the course.

Whereas at Cheltenham you could quite easily shoot the horses jumping the last and then run to the winners enclosure, at Aintree that wouldn’t be possible so I was already putting together a plan of what to do come the main event on Saturday afternoon. The opening day came and went without anything really interesting happening and I left Aintree looking forward to the next morning and the highly anticipated ‘Ladies Day’

As we arrived on Day Two, it was already clear that this would be a completely different affair to Ladies Day at Cheltenham, and this was confirmed when the first set of “ladies” we photographed, who we later found out were from the MTV show ‘The Valleys’, exposed their bare bottoms. Fake tan and plenty of flesh was on show on a cold, windy day and as the day progressed many of the photographers chose to focus on this side of events rather than the horse racing. Despite in previous years many of the women having one too many and becoming a bit of a disgrace, it was a rather tame affair and apart from a few that were struggling, everyone was well behaved and in a fit state.

Like with Cheltenham’s Gold Cup, the whole event had been building up to the John Smith’s Grand National on Saturday afternoon. Known worldwide as one of the most famous events in the horse racing calendar, the event had been in the news during the build up due to the changes that had been made to the course to ensure the horse’s safety following a number of deaths over previous years. I spent the morning photographing the small number of celebrities, including Coleen Rooney, Sir Alex Ferguson and Katherine Jenkins, who performed the national anthem prior to the days racing.

It was then time to focus on the racing and it was soon time to get ready for the main event. I had decided to shoot the start of the race, run to the water jump and then to the finish line to capture as much of the race as possible, hoping for a big celebration as the winning jockey crossed the line. Everything was going to plan – the weather was lovely, I had managed to get some nice shots of the start, made it to the water jump where I had a good position then made it to the finish line with time to spare. Then as we saw the horses coming up the final straight, it became clear there was one horse clear of the rest -  the 66/1 Auroras Encore, ridden by little known jockey Ryan Mania. With such an easy run to the finish, all us photographers followed him as he crossed the line, waiting and waiting for a celebration or at least a reaction of some kind…but nothing came, meaning it was just a bland shot of him crossing the line. We then assembled to photograph him celebrating following the race, and even then he seemed very reluctant to celebrate the biggest moment in his life, with only a few small fist punches towards us expectant photographers.

Knowing I had a lack of standout pictures, I headed back to wire what I had before trying to avoid getting caught in the 70,000 people leaving to head home. Although it was a great event to cover, I would say I preferred Cheltenham from a photographic point of view…despite the copious amounts of flesh on show at Aintree.