DONCASTER
The George Boon Apprentice Handicap, run at Doncaster from 1979 to 1986 in June, commemorated the late clerk of the course there.
In 1964 Major George Boon MBE left the Army, where he’d served in the 7th Hussars and the Royal Army Service Corps. He followed a path many other military men had travelled, moving into racing at first as assistant clerk of the course at Epsom and then Sandown. In due course he became a fully-fledged clerk at Kempton and Doncaster.
For his sins he was clerk at Aintree for the 1975 Grand National meeting, one of many “last Nationals” during the 1970s when property developer Bill Davies purchased the track from Mrs Mirabel Topham. Davies and the Jockey Club did not see eye to eye about the way it should be run and Boon must have had a torrid time as the man in the middle.
Such a small crowd turned out for the race, in which L’Escargot foiled Red Rum’s first bid for a National hat-trick, that the Jockey Club started planning an alternative National for the following year. In December it was announced that it would be run at Doncaster, suitably modified to cope with a huge field. Boon said he would be honoured if that happened, but it would have been a mighty logistical effort to get it done in time. He may have been relieved when Davies agreed a deal with Ladbrokes soon afterwards that allowed the National to continue at Aintree under their management. They installed John Hughes (qv) as clerk and Boon was able to get on with the happier task of preparing for the 200th St Leger in September of that year.
He was busy with his other two tracks, in particular beefing up the quality of racing at Kempton when he died suddenly, aged 63, in September 1978. An apprentice race was run at Doncaster in late June from 1980 to 1986.
KEMPTON
From 1980 to 1985 at Kempton there was an annual George Boon Trainers’ Invitation Race, run over a mile on the Jubilee Course. Winners included Guy Harwood on Big Pal in 1982, and Geoff Lewis, four years after he retired as a jockey, on the Peter Walwyn-trained Naar in 1983.