Mr. Hot Stuff Rules Grand National

The $400,000 G1 Grand National, America's richest steeplechase race, took shape Saturday as a contest between America's best and three overseas invaders, two from England and one from Ireland. On this day, America rules.

At the finish, three of the four American competitors were inches apart, and the winner with a valiant last effort was Gillian Johnston's Mr. Hot Stuff (Tiznow), a Triple Crown contestant in 2009 whose last previous Grade 1 win was in 2013 and his last prior win was in 2015.

The invaders for the Far Hills Races' signature race never took a serious role on a warm, glowing afternoon in central New Jersey. When the flag dropped, Mr. Hot Stuff went to the lead under Irish jockey Danny Mullins, and he alternated on the lead for more than two miles with Buttonwood Farm's All the Way Jose (Senor Swinger), who had gone all the way in Belmont Park's G1 Lonesome Glory H. exactly a month earlier.

Mr. Hot Stuff always has had the stuff to be in the game, including a third in the 2009 GI Santa Anita Derby before he was acquired for jump racing. But expectations were that he would run out of run in the stretch. Mr. Hot Stuff, at age 11, was determined to prove that he still was hot stuff.

For a few strides, it looked as though Modem (GB) (Motivator {GB}) would blow past in the stretch and finally put to rest recent memories that he had finished second in all three of his prior U.S. starts for owner Robert Kinsley and Maryland-based trainer Elizabeth Voss.

But both All the Way Jose and Mr. Hot Stuff were going well and refused to surrender. With Modem, they flew the last fence together. A few strides out from the finish line, All the Way Jose wavered ever so slightly under leading jockey Darren Nagle, and Modem took over under Jack Doyle.

But Mullins kept working on Mr. Hot Stuff, who kept moving forward and refused to concede defeat. In the shadow of the wire, he found just enough to get past Modem and win by a nose. All the Way Jose finished third, another nose farther back.

On an afternoon that recalled late summer more than mid-autumn, Mr. Hot Stuff rekindled tangible memories of his previous glory days, when he won the 2013 G1 A. P. Smithwick Memorial.

The Smithwick Memorial offered promise that Mr. Hot Stuff had finally mastered the jumping sport, but he missed the 2014 season, came back to run well in 2015, and then missed all of last year. He started this year well, sputtered into the summer, and was fifth behind All the Way Jose in the Lonesome Glory.

The win, worth $240,000, raised Mr. Hot Stuff's 2017 tally to $251,100 and all but assured him the 2017 Lonesome Glory Award as the National Steeplechase Association's leading earner. He also will be a factor in the Eclipse Award voting after the Grand National, the year's final Grade 1 race over fences.

The win also was highly significant for his trainer, Jack Fisher, who had a win and a second in previous races. Those results and the Grand National raised his 2017 earnings to $1,182,050, a National Steeplechase Association record.

Fisher had held the earnings record, set in 2008 at $1,156,907. He has exceeded the million-dollar mark two other times, in 2015 and 2016, and is the only trainer to break into seven figures.