By 9 a.m. the trams were crowded and along the roads to Aintree lumbered busses filled with girls nibbling chocolate bars, clerks in their Sunday suits, gentlemen with binoculars who made notes on the margins of their form charts. By 11 a.m. the bookmakers were on their platforms shouting odds soon to be changed: "Fifty to one against the field except Easter Hero!" All morning there were long lines of bettors at the windows of the new "tote" (totalizator) machines.
The sky, which had been misty, brightened before the trippers opened their sandwich baskets. On a barge moored in the Leeds & Liverpool Canal near Valentine's Brook, the Duke of Westminster and his friends quaffed scotch & soda. They were watched, from the Royal stand built several years ago for the Prince of Wales, by a wide-eyed group of Swedish excursionists. The grandstand and enclosure were nearly filled toward noon, when an agitated hare came humping down the home stretch, crossed the finish line and dodged into the paddock. . . .
In the paddock, the horses stood easy and quiet. Cyril R. Taylor's Grakle, a brown gelding nine years old who had run in the Grand National four times and only finished once, nibbled wisps of hay in comparative obscurity; he was a 100-to-6 shot. Gregalach, the chestnut gelding who won in 1929, pawed the ground without enthusiasm while his fanciers flocked around. Thickest of all was the crowd looking at John Hay ("Jock") Whitney's Easter Hero, favorite at odds of 8-to-1.
The warning bell rang and the horses danced slowly through a lane in the crowd from the paddock to the track—Easter Hero first, then Glangesia, Ballasport, Kakuskin and 39 others.
Watched by 300,000 people (100,000 of them women) they stood for a few seconds jostling at the line, then broke in the confusion of a false start. A moment later the field broke again, this time gathering speed and narrowing together as they went past Sefton Yard. Every horse went over the first fence. At Becher's Brook, Swift Roland fell and was killed when the horse behind him landed on his head. The first time past the stands, Easter Hero was ahead, with Gregalach second and Grakle, Shaun Goilin (last year's winner), Solanum, and a half-dozen others bunched close behind.
As they went "into the country" for the second time, Grakle began to move up. At Becher's Brook again, Solanum fell, then Easter Hero. Great Span went down at the Canal fence. At Valentine's Brook Drin fell with a broken leg, was later shot. Coming into the "race course," the long gentle curve that ends the 47-mile Grand National steeplechase, Gregalach, Grakle and Ballasport were in the lead together. R. Lyall up on Grakle cleared the last fence first, swung in to the rail.
In the grandstand, a British radio announcer tried to tell the world about the finish. "Grakle is still there. Grakle is still there. Grakle is out in front. Gregalach is second and Ballasport third. Grakle is there and Gregalach is there. It is a terrific race. No, I think Grakle will win it. It is a terrific race. Gregalach will win it. Grakle has got it. Gregalach is second and Ballasport third.