Horse Racing Systems Article # 2

Grand National Trends To Look Out For

Arguably one of the most famous horse races in the world, whether you're referring to flat racing or national hunt racing, is the Grand National. The National as its commonly know, is run annually at Aintree racecourse in Liverpool over four and a half miles, and involve jumping 30 of the most daunting fences you will ever see.

As a spectacle, it has a huge following and captures the interest of even those who’ve never followed horse racing. The field is always large, with many horses and jockeys alike wanting to participate in the race, however at the present moment only 40 runners are permitted.

Many punters will tell you that of all the races, picking the winner of the National is the hardest. Whilst it may be difficult, it’s not impossible to select the winner, and very often events with a significant history can provide punters with trends that can be used when looking for top horse racing tips for the Aintree race.

History will tell you that the Grand National has a number of interesting and significant trends that even newbie punters can use to narrow down the field of 40, to just a few strong possibilities. A thorough study of each horse’s age, weight and course experience will certainly help in this respect.

From 1998 to date (2008), not a single runner aged 6, 7, 13 or 14 has succeeded in winning or even placing in the National. This alone provides enormous insight to the significance of age in determine the odds that a particular horse will place or win, and you may be thinking that perhaps its worth opting for the younger horse, right?

Wrong! As even more significantly, 11 of the past 17 Nationals winners have been aged ten or over, clearly demonstrating that the National is a race where the more experienced horses have prevailed.

This next statistic is quite amazing, it really is. Only once in the past 22 years has a horse carrying more than 11 stone won the premier national hunt racing event. You can go even further back to the 1940’s, where only four horses since then have seen victory in this race carrying more than 11 stone. Keeping this factor in mind when comparing horses in the National will provide you with a great insight into identifying potential winners, as clearly over the four and a half mile trip the more weight that's being carried, the greater the disadvantage.

Some additional Grand National tips that may help punters to analyze the 40 horses that line up for the Grand National include a number of facts from the long history of this famous race.

For example, there have been five Irish winners in just the last eight Grand Nationals, demonstrating the Irish dominance of recent years. Incidentally, the Irish have also done extremely well at Cheltenham too in recent years. Whereas French bred runners, overall, have had a fairly poor record in recent years. Only one horse with a rating over 154 has ever won the Grand National with only two horses with such a rating being placed in just the last seventeen years. A statistic that again demonstrates that experience really does count is this, that since 1970, every single winner of the race had previously won over a trip of three miles or more. It isn't always the better jumpers that win the race, as in my opinion stamina is possibly more important that jumping ability, but only just.

Article Author: Cliff Thurston

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