Confounded the critics who said he was too small to jump Aintree fences with a hard-fought victory in last year’s Grand National, which itself came on the back of his third victory (this time in the Cross Country Chase) at the Cheltenham Festival.
Tiger Roll is an enigma in that he had the speed to win four races at around two miles (including the Triumph Hurdle) but also the required stamina to win events such as the National Hunt Chase and the Grand National. The next big question is if he can break the long-running poor run of defending Grand National winners and go on and win the race again in 2019. If anyone can train a horse to back-to-back Grand Nationals, it is likely to be the all-conquering trainer Gordon Elliott who already seems to have won most of National Hunt’s big races in a relatively short career.
Confounded the critics who said he was too small to jump Aintree fences with a hard-fought victory in last year’s Grand National, which itself came on the back of his third victory (this time in the Cross Country Chase) at the Cheltenham Festival.
Tiger Roll is an enigma in that he had the speed to win four races at around two miles (including the Triumph Hurdle) but also the required stamina to win events such as the National Hunt Chase and the Grand National. The next big question is if he can break the long-running poor run of defending Grand National winners and go on and win the race again in 2019. If anyone can train a horse to back-to-back Grand Nationals, it is likely to be the all-conquering trainer Gordon Elliott who already seems to have won most of National Hunt’s big races in a relatively short career.
