Moifaa

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Moifaa was a New Zealand-bred Thoroughbred racehorse who won the 1904 Grand National by eight lengths. The jockey was Arthur Birch and the owner at the time was Spencer Gollan.

After winning the Grand National the 17 hand gelding was purchased for King Edward VII, but never won again and was soon thereafter retired to the hunting fields of Leicestershire.

He was the King's favourite horse, and led his funeral cortège in 1910 with a symbolic empty saddle.

A popular myth has grown up in the years since that Moifaa had been thought lost when the ship transporting him to England was shipwrecked. The horse is supposed to have swam a distance, in some extreme version of the story, up to twenty-five miles to make it to the Irish coast where he was found days later.

The shipwreck did happen, but to a horse by the name of Kiora who is reported to have had to swim a very impressive two miles to reach the safety of the shore before later competing in, but not winning the Grand National