Grand National hero Noble Yeats dies at 11 after colic battle

Noble Yeats was more than an upset. He was the horse who turned the Grand National into a family story, then proved the Aintree shock was no fluke by staying relevant at the top end of jump racing long after the confetti had settled. He died at 11 after a bout of colic, leaving behind a winner’s record and a place in the sport’s modern folklore.

His signature moment came on 9 April 2022 at Aintree Racecourse, when he was sent off at 50-1 and still found a way to beat the 15-2 favourite Any Second Now by two and a quarter lengths. Delta Work was third and Santini fourth, but the race belonged to Noble Yeats and Sam Waley-Cohen, who was riding the final race of his career. That detail mattered as much as the result. Waley-Cohen became the first amateur jockey to win the Grand National since Marcus Armytage on Mr Frisk in 1990, and the victory gave the Waley-Cohen family a finish that sounded scripted but was very real.

The horse also carried an unusual layer of history. Racing records list him as foaled on 16 May 2015, which made him the first seven-year-old to win the Grand National since Bogskar in 1940. He was bred by Mrs Kristene Hunter in Ireland, with ownership passing from Paul Byrne to Robert Waley-Cohen on 23 February 2022, just weeks before the National. That ownership switch became part of the legend, because it put the horse in the right hands at exactly the right time.

Noble Yeats did not vanish after Aintree. He returned to the Grand National in later seasons and kept adding to his résumé, winning three more races after his National triumph. His final victory came in the Cleeve Hurdle at Cheltenham on 27 January 2024, when he held off Paisley Park by a head in a Grade 2 finish that showed the same toughness that had carried him through Liverpool. Across 24 starts, he won seven times, finished second twice and third twice, and banked about £763,621.

Robert Waley-Cohen called the National win “one of the great days of our lives” and said Noble Yeats had “fulfilled our dreams.” That is why his death hit harder than the usual line in the results book. He was not just a Grand National winner. He was the rare horse who made the impossible feel personal, then kept race fans believing that jumps racing can still produce a story nobody sees coming.