AS ANYONE WHO bleached their hair or wore flared jeans will know, following trends doesn’t always age well.
Trends that can help narrow down a forty runner, million pound, tightly banded handicap over the most unique fences in the world of horseracing are a little more welcome though.
Tiger’s Task
Repeat winners are rare; Red Rum is more than a lifetime ago for the many of us. He won the race three times, but he was a freak, he also finished second in 1975 and 1976 as well as winning in 1973, 1974 and 1977. Tiger Roll’s task is spectacularly daunting.
Hedegehunter got closest to “Rummy’s” feat when finishing second off a 12-pounds higher mark than when he won by fourteen lengths in 2005. Tiger Roll will have to win off nine pounds higher, for winning in a photo.
One for Arthur is also looking for a repeat win; he obliged in 2017, but missed the 2018 renewal. He is attempting to do it off a six pound higher mark, but the most worrying aspect of his two race preparation is he failed to complete on both occasions.
Trip
The Grand National is a very long race, four miles and two furlongs, with 30 obstacles in the way, proven stamina is essential. Given the tamer nature of the fences in recent years, stamina is possibly almost as important as jumping.
Taking the last 10 winners of the race, eight had previously run over a trip three miles three furlongs or further. The two runners who defy that trend are both owned by the same person, Trevor Hemmings; Many Clouds and Ballabriggs.
All of the horses priced 16/1 or shorter have run over 27 furlongs or further with just one exception; Lake View Lad, owned by Trevor Hemmings, who has owned three Grand National winners.
Weight
‘Weight stops trains’ is an old racing adage and when the task in hand is the longest and toughest jumping test in the game, it’s most applicable. Eleven stone six or more has only been carried to victory twice since Red Rum in 1977. The positive for fans of those horses near the top of the handicap is the biggest weight carrying wins have been since 2012. The race is now such a classy affair, that if trainers try to conceal their horses’ ability too much, the horses will not get to run.
Jumping
Your dad is right when he says the fences are not as big as they used to be, but there are still 30 of them, and the Chair and Beechers’ Brook are daunting tasks. So yes the fences have been softened up, but they still require proven surefootedness. Of the last 22 winners of the race only two had hit the deck or dropped their rider more than twice before winning the National, a big Negative for One For Arthur, who has unseated the last twice. Rathvinden has also failed to complete three times when including his point-to-point runs.
Favourites
With 40 runners and a tight handicap, it’s not unsurprising that favourites do not have a great record. In the 30s and 40s none won and there was just one winning favourite in each of those decades of the fifties through the eighties. Between 1998 and 2010 there were four jollies victorious, three between 2005 and 2010 but none have won since. There have to be better bets available on a Saturday’s racing than a 7/2 poke in the Grand National.
Trainers
Big yards dominate National hunt racing. Henderson, Mullins, Nicholls and Elliot hold much of the ammunition for the major jumps contests; however in the Grand National they have only 4 wins between them. Elliot is the only to have won more than one and Henderson has never had a winner of the big one. The winning most trainer of them all Martin Pipe only had a single winner of the race too. The Grand National is a really all about specialist horses, not where they live.
Jockeys
It’s a similar story for jockeys, winning a Grand National is difficult Ruby Walsh and Leighton Aspell are the only men in the weighroom who are dual winners. AP McCoy rode more winners than anyone else in history and even he only had a solitary winner in the race.
So to save to you bother of actually going through this again, we can narrow it down to Vintage Clouds, Joe Farrell, Walk in The Mill, Step Back and Rock the Kasbah. It’s as easy as that!
