Grand National Preview with Racetrack Wiseguy

 It's too soon to say that the Grand National is getting easier but Willie Mullins is making it look so, even if he thus makes it harder for everyone else. He had five of the first seven last year, including the first three and could have as many as eight runners this year. The money has been for I Am Maximus, the 2024 winner and close second last time and those first two can't be left out again while they are obviously kept specially with this date in mind.

It looks like we are in another period of hardy perennials like we used to have with Red Rum, L'Escargot, Corbiere and Tiger Roll turning up time and again with solid credentials. Taking last year's race as a form guide, Nick Rockett and Grangeclare West are given a couple of pounds extra which makes it too close to call and by now none of them can be regarded as handicap good things.

I was in a betting shop not long after West Tip won in 1986 and some geezer was saying how his mate had made it a handicap certainty whereas his interlocutor said he had thought something else had been. Red Rum and Tiger Roll maybe but with 40 runners over more challenging fences in those days where anything can happen, such 'handicap certainties' are only such after the event. 

But it's not easy to look further down the weights to find much with which to take on this politburo of proven heavyweights. I'm happy to put lines through Banbridge, Gerri Colombe and Haiti Couleurs who have all had their moments but don't look to me like having another one here. Spillane's Tower, maybe; Iroko might be thereabouts; Panic Attack wouldn't come as a shock but, even given that it hasn't been quite the all-conquering season for Mullins and his recent strike rate is below par, you'd think he's ready again for this and so one surely has a sensible chance in what used to be regarded as such a hard race to pick. Not for me, it wasn't, though. Horses that I'd seen stay and jump once kept up a steady percentage of successes.

However, while not being able to keep Maximus out of the first four, I can't get away from Jagwar, receiving a stone from the big guns, after the way he finished at Cheltenham over the shorter trip having had to come from too far back. That looks ideal as an indicator since there is clearly still something in his handicap mark with a further win surely waiting to happen.

And since the weight difference between him and Johnnywho, who beat him half a length there, remains the same, the story suddenly writes itself. It could be all yellow and green and an index to the various different caps used to subtly mark out the JP McManus horses from each other and 1-2-3-4 for the likeable owner of an empire of horseflesh.

So,

1. Jagwar

2. I Am Maximus

3. Spillane's Tower

4. Johnnywho