The Grand National Festival gets underway at Aintree on Thursday, kicking off with four Grade Ones, and expert pundit Kevin Blake has three fancies on the card.
The Grand National Festival at Aintree is here. After what seemed an endless winter, the rain has dried up and the taps have been turned on in no uncertain terms with Aintree putting down plenty of water to try and keep the tracks as soft as they’d like them to be. It promises to be another great few days of action and after this column had a very good time of it during the Cheltenham Festival, I’ll hope to repeat that this week.
The first race of the week over the Grand National fences is Thursday’s Randox Foxhunters’ Open Hunters’ Chase (3:30) and the Mags Mullins-trained LETS GO CHAMP is a very interesting contender. The 11-year-old clearly hasn’t been easy to train over the years, with the better part of four years separating his win in a point-to-point and his racecourse debut, but it has been clear from the outset that he has plenty of talent.
He improved through the ranks for Henry de Bromhead and had his biggest day when winning a valuable handicap chase at the Punchestown Festival two years ago. He underlined his ability by going on to run very well in both the Galway Plate and the Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham.
Switched to Mags Mullins this season with a view to hunter chasing, he made the perfect start in point-to-points when beating Stuzzikini and Journey With Me in an open at Oldtown in February and he followed that through by lowering the colours of Hunters Yarn in the prestigious Tetratema Cup Hunters Chase at Gowran Park in March. The form of those two races has been well advertised in recent days and puts Lets Go Champ up among the better hunter chasers in Ireland.
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Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero will be hoping for the biggest win of their training partnership; with not one, but two leading Grand National fancies in Iroko and Jagwar
More so than anything else, what makes Lets Go Champ appealing in this contest in his style of racing. He is a strong-travelling, forward-goer at mid-range trips which will arm him very well for the test that this race presents. He is also a particularly good jumper that has the right technique for these fences. While his rider Sophie Carter doesn’t get to utilise her claim in this race, she has ridden him for his last two wins and knows him well. He looks overpriced to me.
The Close Brothers Red Rum Handicap Chase (4:40) is always a very competitive race on paper, but the Paul Nicholls-trained SANS BRUIT has made it look easy in winning the last two renewals. The BHA handicapping team have played their role too, as this horse is a particularly stark example of how cooperative they are when handicapping British-trained runners.
After winning this race for the first time off a mark of 130 in 2024, Sans Bruit went on to acquit himself well a few times off a much higher mark, but the handicappers were then extremely generous in dropping him 9lb for four below-par runs. Dropping 9lb for four below-par runs by a horse that had just turned seven is very aggressive dropping by any normal standard.
After this extremely generous treatment, Paul Nicholls delivered Sans Bruit back to this race off the very same mark that he had bolted up off in it a year earlier, he went off at 5-1 and duly came back to life to bolt up once again. If that wasn’t enough, Sans Bruit went to Plumpton 18 days later for a similarly valuable handicap chase and dotted up off a 9lb higher mark.
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Last year’s winning jockey Patrick Mullins spoke to Martin Kelly after the 2026 Grand National weights were announced
Now, it isn’t comparing like with like and you won’t find it written in the rule book, but if this happens in Ireland, then there is a price to pay. Not only can that horse be expected to be given a particularly tough rise, it will also be expected that they will be extremely slow to be dropped again after such a bountiful harvest. However, that isn’t how it works in Britain!
Far from being slow to drop Sans Bruit, the BHA handicapping team have once again been incredibly generous in dropping him 11lb for five runs this season that weren’t that bad at all. Everyone can see that Sans Bruit was being worked towards this race once again, but the handicappers have been more than happy to play along. The extent to how barefaced this all is can be demonstrated by the fact that Sans Bruit was put in as favourite for this race from the opening show and I suspect that he’ll get shorter before he gets longer.
I’m reminded of a memorable quote from former BHA handicapper Phil Smith that underlined the importance that they “favour the majority at the expense of the minority” when it comes to handicapping. Whether or not Sans Bruit wins the Red Rum Handicap Chase for the third time in succession – and I very much fancy him to do so – for the second year in a row, the majority will have very valid questions to ask about how generously he has been treated by the handicappers.
The final race of interest on the day is the Goffs Nickel Coin Mares’ National Hunt Flat Race (5:15) and without the heavy hand of the handicapper to worry about, I quite like an Irish-trained horse in the shape of the Gavin Cromwell-trained LENNON GROVE.
The five-year-old has loads of experience in the bank having won a point-to-point and raced four times in bumpers. She won at Thurles in December, but her run that is of more interest is her third-place finish in a Listed mares’ bumper at Sandown in March.
In a race that it looked to pay to be prominent, she was held up in rear and made good late gains up what may have been the favoured near side. Now that she has secured black type, one can expect her to be given a slightly more forward ride and it wouldn’t surprise to see her show more improvement. She looks overpriced to me.
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