Niall 'Slippers' Madden has pinpointed his 2006 Aintree Grand National win as the highlight of his career, days after announcing his retirement from racing.

Madden called time on his career at Punchestown on New Year's Eve after almost 20 years in the saddle. 

He had many notable victories in a hugely successful career, including Galway Hurdle, the Christmas Hurdle and the Galmoy Hurdle but it’s that victory at Aintree that still sticks out in his mind. 

Madden steered the Martin Brassil-trained Numbersixvalverde to win the Grand National and speaking on 2fm’s Game On, he admitted that it was his career pinnacle.  

"It was a great career, just a day short of 20 years with a licence and yeah, it was a great career, I really enjoyed it," he said.

"Since I was old enough to know what horse racing was, we all followed the Grand National and even friends from school who didn’t follow racing as such, they all followed the Grand National. 

"It was the race that, as far as I’m concerned, any National Hunt jockey would like to win and I was lucky enough to win and what made it even sweeter was it was my first goal. 

"I had ridden him a good few times over hurdles. He wasn’t as good over hurdles but he was very good over fences on slower ground and day he won at Aintree, it was slower ground and he never missed a beat." 

Madden always looked likely to be involved in racing given his background. His father Niall ‘Boots’ Madden was also a jockey and trainer and mother Patricia is a daughter of Toss Taaffe and an accomplished rider herself. 

"It was always there and I knew nothing else really bar horses all my life," Madden explained. "It was always in my blood. 

"I started off with hunting and show-jumping and grandad was always there to help out with advice and so was dad and there was numerous amount of people to help me out going along. 

"When I got old enough I used to go out to different trainers when I was on summer holidays from school just to see how everyone else does it and it was great for me to learn how to ride different horses on different gallops."