Grand National ante-post tips: Trends point to Lord Lariat and Longhouse Poet
Aintree racecourse
With the Randox Grand National looming ever closer, racing analyst Andrew of Fiosrach has studied the trends to see which horses carry the best value ahead of the big race on April 15.
The Aintree Grand National has captured the public's imagination for decades, and indeed is probably the only National Hunt race that most of the UK population has actually heard of.
It is a race which, like the Melbourne Cup in Australia, stops the nation as all sectors of society look to study the form, or just to have a punt on their favourite number, name or colours to hopefully pick out the winner. .
Bookmakers offer extra places to entice the each-way punter and £1 each-way bets proliferate as people often cover multiple horses in the same race.
People have spoken about how difficult it is to find the winner of the big race due to the number of runners and the novel range of fences, but with modification to the fences over the years, the outcome has become less of a lottery and a little more predictable.
The height and drops of the fences have been reduced to reduce the danger to the horses, which obviously is a good thing. This has resulted in a better class of runners with several Gold Cup winners now being entered to run in the National, due to the reduced risk factor.
The only problem with that is the race then tends to be run at a faster pace, so the number of fallers and particularly the number of unseated jockeys has not diminished significantly.
The good thing is with the smaller drops on the other side of the fences, fatalities and serious injuries have been happily much reduced.
I have always used trends to reduce the field once the weights are published for the race, and will do the same now that they were announced on February 21.
That left Lord Lariat, a previous Irish National winner and Longhouse Poet, who ran well to finish sixth in the race last season as an eight-year-old.
