Key events
Preamble
Greg Wood
Hello from Aintree, where the sun is shining and a 55,000 capacity crowd is assembling for the 2025 Grand National – the race that still stops the nation (or perhaps as much as a third of it, at any rate).
The first two days of the meeting have seen some fine performances and excellent racing, but when all’s said and done, Aintree’s festival is all about one race and despite complaints in some quarters that it is not what it was, this year’s National could hardly offer a greater depth of possibilities.
Quite a few of those possibilities, admittedly, are carrying the same green and gold colours of JP McManus, and the owner – who will take sole control of the all-time record for National winners with four if one of his five runners comes home in front – currently has the top three in the betting: I Am Maximus, who won last year, Iroko and Perceval Legallois.
McManus is having one of the best seasons of his near half-century as an owner, and had two winners here yesterday including Gentleman De Mee, in the Topham Chase over the National fences, who achieved the remarkable feat of passing the entire field to win.
It is then 12-1 bar the three, which takes in Stumptown, last month’s Cross Country winner at Cheltenham, and the former King George winner, Hewick, while a host of alternatives at a juicy each-way price are lining up behind.
The going on the Grand National course is good-to-soft – it has been watered furiously for the last fortnight – while it is good ground on the Mildmay course, which stages the other six races on today’s card. That has resulted in a fair few non-runners through the card, most notably Lulamba, the likely favourite, in the Grade One novice hurdle at 1.50.
But the big-race field is assembled and intact, it is the nation’s biggest collective day at the races and, as ever, all the news, insight and action will be here on the blog from the first race to the last.