Grand National horses from England - North East

The Philip Kirby trained gelding will be having his second attempt at the national fences and will be looking to make amends for last time after a heavy fall at the twelfth in the Becher Chase last year. He is now a four-time winner over fences, he won the Grade 3 Rowland Meyrick at Wetherby back in 2019 and when last seen over fences he was third in that same race at the end of 2021 behind Good Boy Bobby and Lord Du Mesnil. Wetherby does seem to be a track he enjoys, three of his four chase wins have now come there and Wetherby is quite different in design to Aintree so that may be a worry regarding his effectiveness in a Grand National. The fact that he has run well on the Mildmay course may go some way to negate those concerns. What might be more of a concern is that the ten-year-old has fallen five times in his career to date. Four of those falls were over hurdles though which he obviously wasn’t treatING with enough respect. He tends to jump with alacrity and exuberance over the larger obstacles and has so far only fallen when facing these fences in the already mentioned Becher Chase. He is given a 148 mark for this, it's the first time that he has dropped below 150 since back in 2019 with his only handicap success to date over fences, albeit he has only run in four, came off a mark of 154 back in 2019 so is six pounds better off in this race. Connections tend to switch between letting the horse attack from the front or holding him up for a late run but there can be no doubt he is more effective when pushing hard from the lead. If such tactics were adopted at Aintree, his bold jumping should be a sight to see.