The Road To The 2013 Grand National

HawkWing said:
Not for me Aragon. I had posted up the other thread on this after the topham.

66/1 shots would be more akin to the old style lottery affair. It would be a easier arguement to make that it was just a long distance staying chase if the favourites were winning. I dont think getting round in the grand national is any longer a mark of achievement. Its safer undoubtedly, and maybe on the first circuit for the leaders its the same test, its less likely to have anyone injured in it, but its a PR exercise now. Thought Greg Wood's piece in the guardian was well made.

What made the Grand National great has been eroded for PR. Modern times.
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Traditionalist views are great but they get you nowhere. In the modern world you have to manage your brand. What you're suggesting is, IMHO, not conducive to the long term success of horse racing, as much as I'd agree generally with your sentiment.

You might not like it (I don't) but you have to be a realist about these things. I personally think the welfare people should sod off and pester someone else but racing is an easy target for them so you have to be prepared to change with the times and manage the external perception.
 
"A number of horses appeared very tired..."

It's a race you dickhead. I wish these tree-hugging pricks would feck off and leave us alone.
 
Chris Cook in The Guardian

I've been banging on for a while about how different the Grand National fences were going to be this year and so it came to pass on Saturday, with only two fallers, while many others plunged through the famous green obstacles and landed running. You can regret the passing of the much more demanding old fences with their solid timber cores, or not; however we feel, the new ones are here to stay.

Punters will have to adjust their thinking to some extent when approaching future Nationals. It will no longer be safe to simply draw a line through a horse who does not always jump well. Bad jumping can still end a horse's chance in the new National but I note that Auroras Encore has five falls, an unseated and a refused on his record, yet coped comfortably with Aintree.

While jumping may be less important in the future than of yore, stamina will be even more important, it seems to me. There has usually been a strong pace in past Grand Nationals but the stiffer fences often had a steadying effect at some point, particularly if one of the pacesetters fell or unseated at an early stage.

On Saturday, it seemed to me that we saw a strong pace maintained for a long way, thanks to Balthazar King and Across The Bay, who both finished the course in their own time after fading on the second circuit. Thirty-three horses got past halfway and again the effect of that in future will generally be to sustain a strong gallop.

The result was that the first four home turned out to be just about the most doughty stayers in the field, all with proven form at four miles or further. Even Teaforthree, a four-mile winner at the Cheltenham Festival last year, tired dramatically on the run-in.

The eventual time, on going no worse than good to soft, was nine minutes and 12 seconds, making it only the ninth-fastest National of the past 20 and slower than the previous three by seven seconds or more. That seems especially significant, given that the race distance was reduced by about half a furlong this year, which ought to have lopped five or six seconds off the time.

You might imagine that a strong pace would lead to a faster time but, in general terms, a fast time is the result of a race being run at a sustainable pace. Quite often, a very strong pace leads to a slow time because runners are slowing down so dramatically in the latter stages, which is what I think we saw on Saturday.

Now that the fences are known to carry so much less threat than before, I'd expect Nationals to be run at that kind of pace quite often, unless the going is much softer. Indeed, trainers may now be thinking of running faster horses that might previously have avoided the race through concerns over their jumping ability.

The result is that we may be best advised to focus even more than in the past on a horse's ability to keep running when others have had enough. Also, the disadvantage of a high weight, reduced in recent years by changes to the way the race is handicapped, may now be back in place, since those with more to carry are at greater risk of sudden fatigue.

Auroras Encore had 10-3, the lowest winning weight for 14 years. There were 17 horses in Saturday's race with 10-12 or more on their backs - that's 42% of the field - but only one of them finished in the first 11.

At some point, I'll try to work out some sectional times from Saturday's race and compare them to previous years, to see if they confirm my idea about the pace.
 
Thought Balthazar King was flying over the first few down to Bechers. So much so that the C4 camera man could barely keep him in shot. Thought horses that wanted to be up with the pace, like Seabass, struggled to get near it (maybe the ground played a part)
 
The Professional Jockeys' Association wants a break in jump racing the day after the 2014 Grand National. Chief executive Paul Struthers says the move would help all of the jockeys involved in the Aintree meeting.
But he stressed it is not as a direct result of Ryan Mania's fall at Hexham on Sunday, less than 24 hours after his Grand National win.
"You can't force a jockey not to ride the next day," he told BBC Sport.
"But this move would give all of the jockeys involved in the Grand National a break and allow the winning jockey to enjoy the experience and take part in the various media activities around the win."
The 2014 fixtures list is being worked on and there are two jumps meetings provisionally scheduled to be held on the Sunday after the Grand National.


Incidentally in 900 AD the Vikings cleared a forest near Liverpool, leaving just one tree, hence its name Aintree. Not a lot of people know that.
 
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I'd give them two days off: the Sunday and the Monday. We can easily do without jumps racing for those two days.

On the other hand, only 40 can be employed in the big race so should hundreds of others be denied two days' earnings for the sake of relatively few, and as as been pointed out, it would be easy enough for those involved to decline to ride over the next day or two.

Interesting issue, though.
 
Didn't realise the reason for Imperial Commander pulling up in the GN was because he bled, so word locally is IC goes back to Ireland as usual for his summer break and a decision will be taken by the owners as to whether he should be retired. Hope they do to be honest.
 
In a way I'm glad to hear it. I didn't like how quickly he dropped out of contention and hoped he hadn't fallen out of love with the game.

Hope whatever decision they arrive at, it's the right one.
 
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