Becher's Brook: The Grand National Fence and Its Drop
Why Becher's Brook in the Grand National is feared for its drop and not its height, how it got its name at Aintree in 1839, and every change made to it since.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Grand National23 min read
- Fence numbers in the race
- 6 and 22
- Published height
- 4ft 10in
- Drop since the 2011 review
- 6 to 10 inches
- Named after
- Captain Martin Becher, 1839
A horse coming to the sixth fence at Aintree sees a green spruce hedge a little under five feet high, no different in outline from the one it has just jumped. What it cannot see is that the turf on the far side is lower than the turf it is standing on. It takes off for a fence of 4ft 10in and comes down further than that.
That is Becher's Brook, the best-known obstacle in the Grand National and in English racing. It is the sixth fence on the first circuit and the twenty-second on the second. The Jockey Club, which owns Aintree, publishes its height as 4ft 10in, and since the landing was re-profiled before the 2012 race the drop has been put at about ten inches on the inside of the course and six on the outside, figures still quoted for the 2025 meeting. A shallow brook runs along the landing side. Almost everything else about the fence has been altered since Captain Martin Becher fell into that brook in 1839, and the alterations are the story.
What Becher's Brook is: the sixth and twenty-second fence
The first six fences of the Grand National stand in a line, on the long run away from the stands after the Melling Road. Becher's is the last of that line. Beyond it the course bends left to Foinavon and the Canal Turn, so the fence sits at a hinge: the end of the straight gallop out and the start of the far turn. The whole sequence is set out, with every height, on our page listing all sixteen National fences.
- 6Fence number, first circuit
- 22Fence number, second circuit
- 58Published height in inches
- 10Drop on the inside in inches
Fence numbers in the Grand National, with the Jockey Club's published height and the larger of the two drop figures given after the 2011 review.
In construction it is like its neighbours. A flexible core, dressed and topped with spruce, a take-off board along the base. The published spread from front to back, taking in the brook, is seven and a half feet. A horse that reaches it has already met an open ditch at the third and plain fences of 4ft 10in and 5ft at the fourth and fifth.
Becher's is not the tallest fence it will jump. Seven of the sixteen are published as taller.
| Fence | Number in the race | Published height | Feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foinavon | 7 and 23 | 4ft 6in | Plain, on a bend |
| Becher's Brook | 6 and 22 | 4ft 10in | Lower landing, brook |
| Canal Turn | 8 and 24 | 5ft | Sharp left turn on landing |
| Valentine's Brook | 9 and 25 | 5ft | Brook on landing |
| The Chair | 15 only | 5ft 2in | Open ditch, raised landing |
The Chair, which is the opposite case, a fence where the ground rises on the far side, has its own page on the tallest fence at Aintree. The reason Becher's outranks it in the public mind has nothing to do with the tape measure.
Why the drop at Becher's Brook matters more than the height
A horse judges a jump from what is in front of it. It reads the ground line at the base of the fence, the height of the top, and its own stride. From those it launches itself on an arc that it expects to end at the level it started from. Every fence it has schooled over at home and nearly every one it has met on a racecourse has confirmed that expectation.
At Becher's the arc carries on. The horse reaches the point where its forefeet should touch and there is nothing there yet. It keeps descending for a fraction longer, and that fraction changes the landing in two ways.
First, the angle. A horse coming down past the level of its take-off meets the ground more steeply, nose lower and quarters higher than it would over a level fence. Its weight, and the rider's, is pitched on to the forelegs.
Second, the timing. The horse has braced for a landing that did not arrive when it should have, and the legs that were set to take the shock have to take a bigger one a moment later. Racing people have a word for what happens when the forelegs fail to hold: the horse "pecks", its head going down to the turf. A bad peck becomes a fall. A mild one can still fire the jockey forward out of the saddle, which is why unseated riders have always been part of the fence's record alongside outright fallers.
Height does none of this. A horse can see height and adjust for it, and the loose spruce on top of a National fence lets it brush through several inches without harm. A drop gives no warning. Horses that have jumped Becher's before appear to remember it, and experienced Aintree horses can be seen shortening and backing off on the approach, landing further out and flatter. That is the argument trainers make for running a horse over these fences in one of the shorter races before asking it to tackle the National.
Ten inches does not sound like much. It is worth remembering what it replaced. For most of the twentieth century the figures usually quoted for the fence were 4ft 10in on the take-off side and 6ft 9in on the landing side, a difference of nearly two feet.
Inside and outside: the choice of line riders once had to make
The drop at Becher's has never been the same across the width of the fence. It has always been greatest by the inside rail and least towards the outside, because of the way the ground lies beside the brook.
That gradient used to present every jockey with a decision on the run from the fifth. The course turns left after Becher's, so the inside is the shortest way round, and over four and a quarter miles ground saved is energy saved. But the inside was where the drop was steepest, where the landing ground itself sloped back towards the water, and where fallers and loose horses tended to collect. The outside cost lengths and was kinder. Going down the inner at Becher's was known as the brave man's route, and it was meant as a description more than a compliment.
Until 1990 there was a further hazard on the inner. The landing side was not flat. It sloped down towards the brook, so a horse that landed short or crumpled on landing could slide backwards into the water. The remodelling after the 1989 race took that slope away, and the splaying of the outside rail at the same time gave more room for horses to fan out.
The re-profiling of 2011 narrowed the difference again by bringing the whole landing up. There is still a gradient, ten inches against six, and riders still talk about it. What has gone is the stark trade between a short dangerous line and a long safe one. In most recent Nationals the field has jumped Becher's spread across the middle and outer part of the fence, with the inside taken by a few who want the rail for the Canal Turn. It is now a tactical preference where once it was a gamble with the horse.
Captain Martin Becher and the first brook in 1839
Martin Becher was born in Norfolk in 1797 and was one of the leading cross-country riders in England in the years when steeplechasing was turning from a private wager between hunting men into an organised sport. His rank came from the Buckinghamshire Yeomanry. Stories that he fought at Waterloo are thought to be without foundation, though he was stationed in Belgium as a young man at the time of the battle.
He had history at Liverpool before the famous fall. In 1836 he won a steeplechase there on a horse called The Duke, a race that many historians count as the first Grand National in all but name. By 1839 he was past forty.
On 26 February of that year he rode Conrad in the race later settled on as the first National, which was won by Lottery under Jem Mason. The course ran across farmland and its obstacles were whatever divided the fields. One of them, known to the riders as the first brook, was described at the time as a timber fence standing about a yard in front of a stream some eight feet wide, with the landing ground a good three feet lower than the take-off.
Conrad got as far as the brook and no further. Accounts differ on whether he refused or hit the timber, and agree on the result: Becher went over his head and into the brook. With the rest of the field about to arrive, he stayed where he was, tucked under the bank, and let them jump over him.
What can be documented, and what cannot
The fall is not in doubt. Nor is the fact that the fence bore his name within a short time, which suggests the incident was talked about immediately and not invented later.
The remark is another matter. Becher is supposed to have said, on climbing out, that he had not known how foul water tasted without whisky in it. Some versions make it brandy. No contemporary report records him saying it on the day, and the line has the polish of a story improved by retelling in sporting newspapers and hunting memoirs over the following decades. It may be true. It is tradition.
One detail that tends to be left out of the legend is better attested. Becher caught Conrad, remounted, set off in pursuit and came off again at the second brook, the fence that a year later would be renamed after a horse called Valentine. He never rode in the race again and died in 1864.
The name is often written Bechers Brook, without the apostrophe, on old racecards and in search boxes. The possessive is the correct form, since the brook is the captain's.
There is a mild irony in the naming. A man who had won at Liverpool, and who was among the best riders of his generation, is remembered for a fall from which he hid in a ditch.
The brook itself, and what became of it
For a century and a half the name was literal. A stream ran along the landing side, at the foot of ground that sloped towards it, and it held enough water to matter.
The stream caused two kinds of trouble. A horse that fell on landing might come to rest on the slope and slide back, and a horse that ended up in the brook was trapped below the level of the course, sometimes on its back, in water. Getting a half-ton animal out of a ditch in the middle of a race, with the field due back in a few minutes, was as difficult as it sounds. The bank also meant that a horse landing short did not land on turf at all.
What stood there in 1989 was a spruce-dressed fence with a deep, wet ditch behind it, and the events of that year's race, described in the next section, ended the arrangement. Aintree raised the bed of the brook by thirty inches. That left about an inch of water in it. The name was kept, and the hazard removed.
The brook was dealt with again in 2005. Accounts from that year record that running water was restored at the fence for the first time since 1989 and that the watercourse was rebuilt and covered with rubber matting, following a first-circuit melee the previous April. The result is a brook in the sense that water runs through it, and a safety feature in every other sense. A horse cannot now fall into deep water at Becher's, and one that lands short meets a surface designed for the purpose.
The Jockey Club's own guide still counts the brook in the dimensions of the fence, as part of the spread a horse has to cover, so in the official description it remains a brook fence.
Visitors who walk the course are often surprised by how little there is to see. The famous brook is a narrow channel at the back of a fence. The drama was always in the difference of levels, and the stream was only the reason the levels differed.
The changes after 1989
Two horses died at Becher's on the first circuit of the 1989 Grand National. Seeandem broke his back in a fall. Brown Trix fell and went into the brook with a fractured shoulder, and his amateur rider, David Pitcher, climbed down into the water and held the horse's head up until help arrived. Another horse, Dark Ivy, had been killed at the same fence two years earlier.
The race was live on the BBC, as it was every year, and the coverage made the difference. The field came back round with the fence partly obstructed, a commentator told viewers that the runners were having to avoid a dead horse, and the incident was replayed in slow motion afterwards. Public reaction was stronger than anything the race had faced before. Questions were asked well beyond the racing pages about whether the fence should exist.
Aintree's answer, carried out before the 1990 running, was to keep the fence and remove the features that had done the damage.
- The ground on the landing side, which had sloped back towards the brook, was levelled off.
- The bed of the brook was raised by thirty inches, reducing the water to about an inch.
- The running rail on the outside was splayed outwards to give horses more room on landing.
The drop itself remained, and so did the height. That was a deliberate line to draw. The slope and the water were treated as traps, hazards that punished a horse after a mistake had already been made, and they went. The drop was treated as the test, and it stayed.
The 1990 race, the first over the altered fence, was run on fast ground and produced a record time, which did nothing to quieten those who said the course had been made too easy.
Racing opinion at the time was divided between those who thought the heart had been taken out of the fence and those who thought it should have gone altogether. Thirty-odd years on, the judgement that holds up is that 1990 was the point at which Aintree accepted the fences would be changed in response to what the public saw. Every later alteration followed from that.
The review after 2011, the bypass and the re-profiled landing
By 2011 the course had been widened on the outside of the fences so that the field could, if necessary, be sent round one instead of over it. The arrangement had never been needed in the National.
On 9 April 2011 it was. Dooneys Gate fell at Becher's on the first circuit and suffered a fatal injury, and veterinary staff were still at the fence, behind screens, when the runners came round again. Officials placed arrowed markers in front of the obstacle and waved chequered flags, and the field passed along the outside. Becher's Brook was jumped once in that race. With an earlier fence also missed out for the same reason, the 2011 National was run over twenty-eight fences, something that had not happened since the modern course took shape.
The sight of a National field galloping round Becher's, on a warm afternoon with the screens in view, prompted a review by the British Horseracing Authority and Aintree. Its recommendations for the fence were specific. The landing side was to be re-profiled to reduce the drop by between four and five inches across the width, leaving roughly ten inches on the inside and six on the outside. The height was to stay at 4ft 10in. Elsewhere on the course the fourth fence was lowered, the landing at the first was levelled, and the take-off boards were raised.
The work was done before the 2012 race. That race was worse. Synchronised, who had won the Gold Cup at Cheltenham the month before, fell at Becher's on the first circuit, ran on loose and was fatally injured at a later fence. On the second circuit According To Pete was brought down at Becher's when another horse fell in front of him, and he too had to be put down.
Further changes followed for 2013, the most important being the replacement of the rigid timber cores inside the fences with flexible plastic. That was a change to the whole course and is explained on the fences page. Since then the fence has been left largely alone, and the package of alterations announced for 2024 did not touch its dimensions.
How Becher's Brook is ridden
Jockeys who have ridden the National tend to describe the fence in the same order, as a sequence of small jobs.
- Choosing a lineOn the run from the fifth the rider settles on a path, inner, middle or outer, and avoids changing it late.
- Seeing a strideThe horse is kept balanced and allowed to meet the fence on a forward stride without being fired at it.
- In the airThe rider begins to sit upright as the horse reaches the top of its jump instead of staying forward.
- Slipping the reinsOn the way down the rider lets the reins run through the fingers so the horse can stretch its neck.
- LandingWeight goes back and the lower leg forward, to stay behind the horse's shoulder as it meets the ground.
- Gathering upThe rider collects the reins, balances the horse and turns left with the bend towards Foinavon.
A description of common practice among National riders, not a rule. Individual horses and jockeys differ.
The phrase most often used is "sit back and slip your reins". Over an ordinary fence a jump jockey stays fairly forward, going with the horse. At a drop that position is fatal to the partnership, because a horse that pecks on landing takes the rider's weight on to its neck at exactly the moment its forehand is overloaded. So the rider leans back, sometimes to a degree that looks exaggerated in photographs, with one hand occasionally leaving the reins to keep balance. Photographers station themselves at the landing side of Becher's for that reason.
Slipping the reins matters as much. A horse landing steeply uses its head and neck as a counterweight and needs to reach forward and down. A rider who keeps a short hold of its mouth stops it doing so and may be pulled over its head. Letting the reins slide to the buckle gives the horse its freedom, and leaves the jockey with a yard of loose leather to gather up again afterwards.
That gathering up has to be done on a bend. The course starts to turn left almost as soon as the runners touch down, and the next fence, Foinavon, comes up quickly on that curve with the Canal Turn after it. A horse that lands sprawling at Becher's and takes four or five strides to recover arrives at Foinavon unbalanced. Riders say that the three fences have to be thought of together.
What a jockey can do about other horses is limited. Most trouble at Becher's has involved more than one runner: a faller that brings down the horse behind, or a loose horse crossing the take-off. Choosing a line with some daylight on it is the only defence, and in a field of thirty or more that is as much luck as judgement. How fallers, unseats and horses brought down are recorded is covered in our explanation of how the race is run.
Second time round: the twenty-second fence
By the time the survivors return to Becher's they have gone about three miles and jumped twenty-one fences. The field is strung out. There may be fifteen or twenty still going where thirty-odd went over first time, and the problem is no longer traffic.
It is fatigue. A tired horse jumps lower and lands heavier, and its forelegs have less in reserve to absorb a steep landing. The drop that a fresh horse skipped away from on the first circuit catches it now. Jockeys on horses that are still travelling well will often ask for a bold jump here to gain ground. Those on horses that are beginning to empty sit quiet and hope.
Becher's second time is also where the shape of the race tends to show itself. There are eight fences left. A horse that is going to win is usually within sight of the lead, and commentators call the order in earnest for the first time. In 1973 the television pictures at this fence showed Crisp so far in front of Red Rum and the rest that the result looked settled, which made what happened on the run-in all the more startling.
Four years later the fence changed the result directly. Andy Pandy was clear in the lead when he came to the twenty-second in 1977. He fell. Red Rum, among those chasing him, was left in front with eight to jump and went on to win his third National, the one that completed the record set out on the page about his Aintree career.
In 2005 the leader did not even get to jump it. Clan Royal, ridden by A. P. McCoy, was in front and going strongly on the approach when loose horses ran across him and carried him out, off the course and out of the race. Hedgehunter inherited the lead and won.
And in 1967 the twenty-second was jumped without much incident by some twenty-eight horses, nearly all of whom came to a halt one fence later. The disaster that put Foinavon's name on a fence happened at the very next obstacle, to a field that had just landed over it and was still sorting itself out.
The incidents that made its name
A fence acquires a reputation through particular afternoons. These are the ones the record supports, with the year and the horses named.
| Year | Circuit | Horses involved | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1839 | First | Conrad | Captain Becher thrown into the brook, giving the fence its name |
| 1977 | Second | Andy Pandy | Fell when clear, leaving Red Rum in front |
| 1987 | First | Dark Ivy | Fatal fall |
| 1989 | First | Seeandem, Brown Trix | Both fatally injured, prompting the remodelling of 1990 |
| 2004 | First | Akarus, Montreal, Bindaree, What's Up Boys and others | Nine horses put out in a melee begun by a loose horse |
| 2005 | Second | Clan Royal | Carried out by loose horses when leading |
| 2011 | First | Dooneys Gate | Fatal fall, and the fence bypassed on the second circuit |
| 2012 | Both | Synchronised, According To Pete | A first-circuit fall and a second-circuit horse brought down, both fatally injured |
The 2004 episode shows how multi-horse incidents at the fence develop. A loose horse, Shardam, badly hampered Akarus and put him on the floor. Three others were brought down in the same moment, among them Bindaree, who had won the race two years before. Another horse fell independently, two riders were unseated in the confusion and two horses refused. Nine runners were gone in a few seconds, few of them through a jumping error of their own.
That pattern, one mistake multiplied by the horses around it, accounts for more of the fence's casualties than the drop acting on a single horse in isolation. It is the reason a smaller field matters at Becher's in particular. The reduction of the maximum field to 34 for 2024, explained in our guide to the safety limit, was argued for partly on the ground that fewer horses arriving at the early fences together means fewer chain reactions.
The fatalities in the table are a matter of record and are the reason the fence was changed. They are also the reason some people believe it should not be jumped at all. That argument is not settled, and this page does not pretend it is.
Something else belongs in the record. In 2013, the first year of the flexible fence cores, every one of the forty runners jumped Becher's safely on the first circuit and went on over Foinavon. For the fence that had seen 1989, 2011 and 2012, that was the more remarkable afternoon.
Becher's outside the National
The fence is jumped in four other races.
At the April meeting the Foxhunters' Chase, for amateur riders, takes place on the Thursday and the Topham Chase, a handicap, on the Friday. Both are run over about two miles and five furlongs and eighteen fences. On the start positions used in recent seasons those races begin on the racecourse proper, take in the two plain fences there and then the Chair and the Water Jump before heading out into the country, so Becher's comes up as the tenth fence and not the sixth. That is a real difference. The field has already jumped the tallest fence on the course and has had more than a mile to settle, and it meets Becher's once only.
Two more races over the spruce are run at Aintree in the early part of the winter, in some years on the same card and in others weeks apart. The Grand Sefton Chase follows the same pattern as the Topham. The other is the Becher Chase, which carries the captain's name, has been run since 1992, and covers about three miles and two furlongs with twenty-one fences. It is a handicap, like the National itself. Becher's Brook is past the halfway point of that race, and the Becher Chase is the nearest thing to a dress rehearsal that the calendar offers: more than one circuit, on winter ground, with the drop to be jumped by horses that are beginning to tire.
None of these races goes round twice. So the particular test of the National, Becher's as the twenty-second fence after three miles, exists only in the National. A horse can have jumped the fence faultlessly in a Topham and a Becher Chase and still never have met it in the condition that matters most.
What these races do provide is evidence. A horse's first sight of a drop fence is a risk, and trainers would sooner take it over a shorter trip in a smaller field. The fences, the two tracks and the layout that makes the different starts possible are described in our Aintree racecourse guide.
The same place, a different fence: every recorded change
Becher's Brook stands where the first brook stood in 1839. The fence that stands there has been rebuilt, in one respect or another, at least half a dozen times.
| Year | What changed | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1839 | Natural brook with a timber fence in front, as described at the time | Landing about three feet below take-off; brook about eight feet wide |
| 1954 | Minor amendments to the landing side on the recommendation of the National Hunt Committee | First recorded easing of the landing |
| 1990 | Landing slope levelled, brook bed raised thirty inches, outside rail splayed | Horses could no longer slide back into deep water |
| 2005 | Brook rebuilt with running water under rubber matting | A safer surface for a horse landing short |
| 2011 | Fence bypassed on the second circuit for the first time | National run over 28 fences |
| 2012 | Landing re-profiled, drop reduced by four to five inches | About ten inches inside and six outside; height unchanged at 4ft 10in |
| 2013 | Rigid timber cores replaced by flexible plastic across the course | A fence that gives when hit low down |
Two cautions about the early rows. The 1839 dimensions come from descriptions written at the time and not from a survey, and they describe a different kind of obstacle, a timber fence in front of a stream, so they cannot be set directly against modern figures. And there is a long gap between 1839 and 1954 in which the fence certainly changed, from bare timber to a built fence dressed with greenery, without the dates being reliably recorded. The table lists what can be dated.
The direction of travel is plain enough. The drop has gone from something like three feet, to nearly two for much of the last century, to ten inches at most. The brook has gone from eight feet of open water to a channel covered with matting. The height has barely moved.
Aintree's approach has been consistent in one respect: it has changed what a horse lands on and has left alone what a horse sees. From the take-off side Becher's still looks as it does in film from the 1960s, and the commentary still drops its voice as the field approaches. Whether a fence can keep its meaning once the danger that gave it the meaning has been engineered down is a fair question. The answer the last decade of results gives is that horses and riders still treat it with respect, and that fewer of them are hurt there.
Readers who want the rest of the course in the same detail can start from our England guides, and occasional shorter pieces on racing appear on the blog.