Grand National Lucky Dip

Farclas entered last year’s Grand National with a number of question marks against him, but the gelding ran a brilliant race to finish fifth. Before the race Farclas’ ability to staay 4m 2f was under debate as he had not proved his stamina for a marathon test and had only run further than 2m 5f on one occasion. At the time he was also only seven-years-old and horses of that age do not have a good recent record in the Grand National. With those drawbacks in mind, we can give even more kudos to Farclas’ staying on fifth place behind Minella Times. That said, he was nearly thirty lengths behind the winner that day so a major improvement would be needed for the Gordon Elliott trained gelding to improve on his placing in 2022. Since the Grand National, Farclas has been campaigned at three miles but his normally sure footed jumping failed him on his seasonal appearance at Listowel where he unseated Jordan Gainford. His next run in the Troytown at Navan was more successful as he finished a seven and a half lengths runner-up to Run Wild Fred. Like Tiger Roll, Farclas is a former winner of the Triumph Hurdle so his connections will be hoping that the correlation between the two horses does not end there. Farclas is currently on a five pound higher mark than his run in the Grand National last year but he is likely to be one of the more fancied runners for the big race in 2022.