‘Any tips for the National?’ I think anyone who has even a vague connection to a horse has been asked this question over the last week, and it’s a pretty impossible one to answer. With a field of forty and some very tough obstacles to get over safely on the way, all you can really do is look at statistics. As Belinda McClung, one of the owners of last year’s National winner, One for Arthur, put it to me: ‘There isn’t as much pressure in a race like the Grand National, where there are 39 other horses; you can get brought down, fall – anything can happen.’
If you do want to look at stats, then the average age of a Grand National winner over the last ten years has been 9 ½, and the favourite rarely wins; in the last fifty years, the favourite has won only 11% of the time.
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