Grand National Blog

This is the second part of our look at runners in the 2008 Grand National and how they performed at the Cheltenham Festival: Over The Creek I’ve seen Over The Creek touted in a few places (including on this site) as a horse to consider for the National this year but I really could not [...]

The latest set of entries for the Aintree Grand National was relaeased today with a total of ten horses being withdrawn. They are: Celestial Gold, Monkerhostin, Rule Supreme, Joe Lively, Parsons Legacy, Boychuk, Kilbeggan Blade, Bob Bob Bobbin, Captain Corelli and Brooklyn Breeze. With the withdrawl of Celestial Gold, Hi Cloy and Hedgehunter are now [...]

A number of Grand National candidates ran last week at the Cheltenham Festival but did any of them enhance their Aintree chances with good performances? Ran at the Festival and The National – Cross them off? Only one Festival winner has gone on to success in the Grand National since 1961 (Seagram 1991) but eight [...]

Silver Birch – The start of a trend? The victory of Silver Birch in last year’s Grand National inevitably makes form students go back through his form for ‘clues’ to see if the 2008 winner might take the same sort of path. It has been suggested in some quarters that Cross Country races could become good [...]

Favourite Picture Not So Cloudy Cloudy Lane is as short 6/1 to win the Aintree Grand National following his third consecutive win of the season, this time in the highly valuable Grimthorpe Chase at Doncaster. Donald McCain’s young chaser had earlier recorded good victories at Haydock and Ayr as well as the Kim Muir at [...]

Breeding experts will tell you that the stamina comes from the sire. So surely, in a race where the most stamina is required, we should be able to learn something by looking at the sires of past national winners. Are there any trends to help us find the 2008 runners with the greatest stamina? The [...]

Its been mentioned on several threads on this blog already that you should simply put a line through all French breds running in the Grand National. Why? Well the argument is that one hasn’t won since 1909. But I would urge you not to be so hasty. French breds do stay! Since 1994 French breds [...]

No Beef? Beef Or Salmon looks set to have his target changed from the Grand National to the Irish alternative at Fairyhouse after connections were disappointed at being allocated the welter burden of 11st 12lb. Michael Hourigan’s 12 year old would have been asked to shoulder top weight and that did look a very tall order at [...]

Last Saturday saw a large number of Grand National entrants having one of their last runs before the big race in April. Tear up your Ante-Post tickets? However, anyone holding an ante -post voucher for most of the horses sighted at the weekend must be wishing they could have a refund as the displays of [...]

Thanks to all of you who have contributed to the GN Weights thread and suggested ideas as to how we can cut the runners down. Now that there are a few of us on the site I thought it would be nice to try and work together to see if we can form a small [...]