Grand National Tips: Our ultimate Cheat Sheet for Aintree 2024

The favourite, and very short at that, is trained by Willie Mullins and owned by Mrs S Ricci, and he is called Gaelic Warrior. Still a maiden after three hurdle starts in France he has a mark of just 129 which compares very favourably with his French peg of 63kg (multiply by 2.2 to get 138.6 pounds, making GW ten pounds ‘well in’). In his most recent start, Gaelic Warrior was outpaced on heavy ground before finishing strongly to take third of 14. The second horse, Golden Son, has since won a Grade 2 before claiming runner up honours in a G1; while the winner, Sans Bruit, has won a Grade 3 and been third in a Grade 2. Let’s start on home shores and Constitution Hill has looked all class in a pair of facile Sandown scores to date, trouncing a field of maidens before treating his Grade 1 Tolworth rivals with similar disdain.

Horse Racing Tips: A 7/1 NAP tops our best Kempton bets tonight

We do also display win and place percentages but, in truth, these are the equivalent of answering the question, “What time is it?”, with “Tuesday afternoon”. Next in the lists, at 10/1, is Al Boum Photo, winner of the 2019 and 2020 Gold Cups and third last year. That seemed to signal a changing of the guard, an impression that recently turning ten has done nothing to dispel. The substance of his Punchestown second to Clan Des Obeaux and his annual trot around Tramore on New Year’s Day has corroborated the perception of this brilliant fellow yielding just a touch to the passage of time. For all that iffing and butting, A Plus Tard is the right favourite and almost certain to offer a run for the pennies.

Grand National

Looking at the winning odds over the last 20 renewals, the biggest-priced winner was Baron Bolt in 2018, winning for Paul Cole at odds of 28/1 under the guidance of Cameron Noble. Looking at the runners at the head of the market over the last 20 renewals there have been 4 winning favourites in the race. Whilst we wait for the 2025 Ayr Gold Cup remember you can get daily racing predictions from the top racing tipsters on the best racing tipsters page.

Royale Pagaille – National Hunt Chase – 5/2 bet365 (NRNB, BOG)

That race tempo looks a reasonable fit against today’s likely setup and, what’s more, the horse in question, Tropez Power, won it – over today’s course and distance and in today’s class. He’s a dual winner from four starts on all-weather and, in between those wins, he again showed good acceleration to close from 3 3/4 lengths behind to a length behind at the line in another similarly run race. No, the job here is to look at how the percentages within a going column change based on the number of previous wins on that going. This rises to a bit more than 12% for those with a single prior win on good ground and hovers around the same figure for runners who have twice won previously on good; it then drops a notable bit for triple good scorers. This doesn’t just work on all-weather or on turning tracks, by the way. Both Newmarket courses, for example, offer great advantage to front-runners over most trips up to about nine furlongs.

Michael O’Leary, the owner, speaks

The opening day always majors on speed, quality, and drama from the get-go, with a double-barrelled Grade 1 two-mile novice volley to kick us off. Irish-trained runners have more than twice the strike rate of their counterparts trained in UK. Moreover, they’ve enjoyed a 55p in the £ difference in their returns, and a clear differential between the A/E indices.

My big 3-1 NAP loves soft ground and heads to Ascot in great form

• She should have plenty more to come over this trip and, unlike the favourite, we know for certain that she’ll stay.
• SH – If Blazing Khal runs, he will go off favourite and looks the most likely winner.
• At the top table this term, she’s found life tougher, twice getting a distant view of Sharjah’s tail before finishing closer to Honeysuckle albeit in a steadily run contest.
• Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
• More Willies out front than a Festival urinal, and one of them will tow Ballyburn into the race if he doesn’t make his own running.
• Despite owner Michael O’Leary’s efforts to quash the hype, SAMCRO arrives with a sizeable reputation and his racecourse performances say that he deserves it.

Then, more recently, Chacun Pour Soi was returned 8/13 but could only return to the 3rd place area in the winners’ enclosure. Since then, Energumene was sent off at 5/2 and 6/5 in his two recent winning years. A Champion Chase that has been El Fabiolo’s to lose for much of the season. And in the absence of his Closutton mate and reigning champ of the past two years, Energumene, he shows at odds on to register a third victory in a row for that man Mullins, who – let’s not forget – had never won the QMCC prior to 2022.

Horse Racing Tips: A 7/2 nap tops our trader’s Friday night fancies at the Breeders’ Cup

We’ve gone through all FIVE cards on Tuesday so here’s what we’re backing. All our selections can be added straight to your bet365 bet slip (just click the orange links). MITBAAHY didn’t get the breaks when edged out by Raasel at Sandown Park last time, and has sound prospects of gaining his revenge. Simply register, place a £10 wager on the selection of your choice and you will qualify for this unbeatable welcome offer.

Coral Cup result

It was a fourth Champion Chase for Henderson since Finian’s Rainbow broke his duck in the race in 2012 and his 60th winner in all at the meeting. Horses of a lifetime, it seems, are like London buses for the trainer these days and if he becomes the first trainer to win Cheltenham’s big three races in the Gold Cup on Friday, Might Bite might be considered another. A lot more returns and respective debuts throughout the week before we got to the season openers at Cheltenham and Aintree. After all the hard work there was just the one bet for us which was successful. It can be seen as frustrating to have put in all that work but also rewarding in the long term to have amassed a great deal of valuable future information.

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In another life his jockey Nico de Boinville might have been one of those soldiers who is unexceptional in peacetime but extraordinarily cool under fire. After Douvan had crashed out at the last ditch, while leading, there were five horses in with a chance turning in. High quality Saturday with the second day at Wetherby who feature a pair of Grade Two races plus a Listed.

Robin Goodfellow’s racing tips: Best bets for Wednesday, April 20

Last year’s runner-up Popmaster is a big price and United Approach can reward each-way backers. Five-time Irish champion Colin Keane takes the ride and that is a huge plus. Last year’s impressive winner Inspiral is a class act but it’s hard to have any confidence in her given she has blown the start on her last three runs.

Evocative Spark

If you are already a member, then share your thoughts on the Futurity Trophy Weekend 6f Handicap by adding a tip on the race here. You may also be interested in other preview blogs that we have packed full of information, head down to the Other Principal Races at Doncaster Racecourse section for links to these. Getting one’s head around sectional timing is not the easiest way to play the horses, but there are real insights to be gleaned for those who take some time to figure it out.

CHARITY BETS

If the ground dries out, it might be that connections of Honeysuckle decide to run over this two-and-a-half mile trip rather than the extended two of the Champion Hurdle. The hallmark of those runs, and indeed her run style generally, is being held together off the pace before cruising through to prevail comfortably. In so doing it is hard to peg the level of her form exactly, always leaving the impression there is more in the tank. Lightly raced, as is often the modus operandi with Willie Mullins’ better mares, Concertista has run just twice this term. She beat the same mare, Minella Melody, by nearly two lengths in a Grade 2 in November and then by more than six lengths in a Grade 3 at the turn of the year.

Both the jump and Flat trainers’ championships run at the same time as the jockeys’ championships. However, there is a major difference in how the winner is determined as the trainers’ championship is decided by total prize-money rather than winners. In our new introduction to racing our experts have collated the most essential information to help you understand and enjoy this brilliant sport, including how to pick a winner, four must-know facts and how to watch the action. He has gone close a few times in these big handicaps and if his top rider can smuggle him through then he has every chance. Qirat is a worthy favourite having won a hot contest at Goodwood with a bit up his sleeve.

Welcome to horseracing

• “I was very concerned about the draw, I had a thoroughly bad day when I found out his position.
• Here there appears to be quite strong correlation between Elliott’s four-month form and his Festival form.
• There are so many places online that we can turn to when we want to place a bet, whether we choose to head to Ladbrokes horse racing or to any of the other sites that offer this type of wagering.
• Can win a well-deserved Group 1 in the Sun Chariot Stakes.
• He has few miles on the clock and was much improved when second at Wolverhampton last time.

Paul Nicholls has a very good record in handicap hurdles, too, in contrast to his Grade 1 performance in recent seasons. But the likes of Evan Williams and Charlie Longsdon (0 from 31, 0 places, between them), Noel Meade and Dr Richard Newland (0 from 27, 3 places, collectively) are probably best passed up. Naturally, then, the other 50 winners came from horses priced at 16/1 or shorter, the 381 such runners losing just 31 points at SP, and breaking even at BSP.

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Icing On The Cake unseated at the third in that Ludlow race having dug deep to win at Newbury on his previous outing. There are a few firms quoting double figures for his chances. This year’s fundraiser will again be centred around the Cheltenham Festival. For a donation of £25 you will get the exclusive Cheltenham preview, horses to follow direct from the Lambourn trainers plus membership for the period 11th to 19th March. Your full £25 will go directly to the Lambourn Valley Housing Trust. Chef D’Oeuvre won unchallenged on desperate ground at Hereford and that piece of form is difficult to evaluate.

• Competition among bookmakers, particularly online, is fierce, so don’t be afraid to open accounts with multiple firms and if you are betting on course, be sure to shop around the betting ring and bet with whoever is offering the best price.
• It follows then that the other 34 victors were priced at 20/1 or shorter, of which there were 458 runners.
• As part of a tie-up with SBC to help expose the quality of No Foto Needed’s advice, he supplied all advice free of charge to SBC members between the 14th of March and the 12th August 2022, during which time the service thrived.
• Unlike CPS, EA has been slated to start twice and has started – and finished first – twice.
• Brought down on fencing debut, that inauspicious introduction has long been forgotten as he has subsequently strung four straight chase wins together, three of them in Graded company, one a Grade 1.
• Both Newmarket courses, for example, offer great advantage to front-runners over most trips up to about nine furlongs.
• Djakadam and Outlander have little between them on form in Ireland.

The merit of that heavy ground G1 form is unclear with the second and third getting thumped next time, but the winner could have done no more. He is clearly a very classy recruit whose maiden win offers hope that the quicker Cheltenham turf won’t be a problem. We have to yet to see what he’ll find off the bridle, though, and it is hard to imagine any horse taking this ‘on the snaff’. Of course, it is sometimes difficult to predict who the favourite will be pre-race which can be an issue for trying to exploit ‘market data’. However, as a general rule, the stronger the favourite the better. What I mean by that is, horses who are a much shorter price than the second horse in the betting tend to do best here at the festival.

Horse Racing Tips: Timeform’s Thursday Newcastle shouts include a 10/1 fancy

That said, plenty of owners and trainers are represented by multiple runners so they may send a ‘hare’ forward to chase. He’s a very unsexy price but might still be value at around 1/3. I don’t really fancy Irish Point, who in my view would have been better placed in the Stayers’ Hurdle even if his owner does have Teahupoo for that.

• Although most winners were clustered in the six to nine years bracket, neither youth nor experience has been a killer blow in handicap chases.
• As a user on a new site, you might be able to take advantage of some promotions they could have put together to celebrate their launch.
• Exhibit A to that end are the two races – both comfortable victories, in Grade 2 and Grade 1 company – in one month, the final month of last year.
• Even at relatively short odds of 7/2, there may be a losing run of 27 or 28 bets in a 1000 race sample; so we have to be set up, emotionally and financially, to deal with that.
• His form this season is 1P1, wins in the Galway Hurdle (off 145 in a field of 19 on goodish ground) and a Naas Grade 3 in a small field on soft sandwiching a flunk when he was found to have been post-race clinically abnormal.
• One who would be right at home in the mud and at a massive price, too, is Favour And Fortune, second in the aforementioned Aintree G1, and a winner on heavy previously.
• That Paul has opted for Tullyhill is a potential red herring this year because Mystical Power has a retained jockey – and there is nothing to separate them in the market as I write (Sunday afternoon).

My opinion is that those two perspectives are not mutually exclusive and both hold water. Yet another former Festival winner is Indefatigable whose 2020 Martin Pipe win was a red letter day for trainer Paul Webber but also for geegeez-sponsored then conditional rider, Rex Dingle. Rex came with the proverbial wet sail there, weaving through tiring rivals up the run in to present the mare on the line, a style which has proven more difficult to pull off in smaller field, more steadily run contests since. The best fancied of the Irish party is the Willie Mullins-trained Blue Lord, whose hitherto unbeaten trio over fences culminated with Grade 1 success in the Irish Arkle at the Dublin Racing Festival. His hurdles form was better than respectable – he’d have been comfortably closest to Appreciate It in last year’s Supreme but for tumbling at the last – and he’s looked assured in his leaping thus far.

In this case, 2nd of four beats two horses and loses to one horse, so has a PRB score of 67% (or 0.67) for beating two out of three of its rivals. Impact Value (IV) is a measure of how frequently something happens for x in relation to how frequently it happens for all. For instance, how often the going is good to soft on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival compared to how often the going is good to soft over all days of the Cheltenham Festival. Protektorat has been Pricewise’d in the last couple of days, that value vacuum cleaner meaning he’s a rum price for us Johnny Come Lately’s, but he’s not really one I’m yet persuaded by anyway. And so, enfin, let us peruse the past performances, in approximate market rank order.

Davy Russell will return to the saddle “in a fortnight or so” after spending 11 months on the sidelines with injuries to his neck and back. Divine Comedy burst out of the pack to chase him down, but the 20-1 chance – who went for 450,000 guineas as a yearling – held on by half a length. Prescott, who won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe with Alpinista in 2022, was saddling just his third winner at the meeting in all, with Wizard King in the 1994 Britannia his only other success. “He’s run very well, he showed a lot of speed early on and the stiff finish just caught up with him in the last 100 yards,” said the trainer. “We needed a lead-up run at Haydock, so she came over early, but just with the changing of seasons we wanted to be here before it was too cold in Australia and too warm over here. We came over in the nice interchange period, and we need not have worried because she settled in brilliantly, and the proof was in the pudding today.

Mitbaahy opened his campaign with a close second at Nottingham at the start of May before going one better against three opponents for a valuable conditions stakes over five furlongs at Hamilton Park the following month. In the Coral Cup, Fixe Le Kap can run a big race at a big price. He has had problems this season but is back in top form at home and has the soft ground that he relishes. I have spoken to Daryl Jacob and he is going to ride a patient race, sneaking into contention, and he is one of the best in the weighing room at that. You could not wish to meet a nicer guy than Daryl, and there is nobody better at holding up a horse, so I have given him his riding instructions and told him to creep into the race. The versatility of PRESENTING PERCY is rare in a staying chaser and that quality suggests he is a cut above the average.

He’s won his last four starts, all Grade 1’s, by 12L, 22L, 12L, and 17L – and had won his previous start by 14L. His speed figures are just about off the scale and he can take a position wherever in the field meaning tactics are not a worry. Given he’s normally an excellent jumper, there are essentially no holes in Constitution Hill’s profile whatsoever and he’s a very worthy odds-on favourite. The Supreme is sometimes won by a clear cut favourite – think Appreciate It or Douvan – but, more often than not, the waters are muddier and the multiple returned for finding the winner more appealing. This year falls into the latter bracket, and surely bookies all over the country will be desperately trying to ‘get’ Facile Vega.

• In that spirit, I’ll take the Brits to beat the Irish, primarily through Jpr One and Master Chewy.
• Although horses that either finished 3rd LTO or 5th or worse have made a profit, this is down to big prices skewing the figures.
• Acey Milan has plenty of experience and has shown smart speed for a bumper horse.
• A fine fourth of 15 in the Coral Gold Cup (Hennessy as was) in November was his most recent run, though that was 108 days ago.
• Mullins was actually unrepresented in that inaugural running, but then went on to win nine of the next ten editions, six of them with the fantastic though only occasionally seen Quevega.
• These seasoned experts analyse horse form, course record, jockeys and trainer form, and offer a well-rounded view of the race.

While he has obviously got his work cut out reversing that form, it is easy to envisage him staying on when others have cried enough, into the minor places. Place a min £10 bet on Football on odds of min 1.5 (1/2), get £50 in Free Bet Builders after the qualifying bet has been settled. Only deposits via cards will qualify (Apple Pay excluded). There are multiple leading jockeys in the Futurity Trophy Weekend 6f Handicap over the last 13 renewals with Tom Eaves, William Buick and Silvestre De Sousa having all won the race two times. Tom Eaves winners have been with Nameitwhatyoulike (2015) and Magical Spirit (2021).

Much has been made of the wind operation that prevented him returning to racecourse action until Newbury last month, but it was a minor procedure that he underwent. Altior showed the problem was behind him when soon putting Politologue to the sword that day and winning by four lengths. This was a fine display – close to his best previous form – as Politologue had been in the ascendancy with three smart wins in top class races to his credit.

Mistakes with his fencing likely contributed to him dropping out of contention from before three out, and he was well beaten when unshipping Paul Townend at the last. If you liked Ballyburn for this, his representative is the Henry de Bromhead-trained Slade Steel, who was third and second to the Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle favourite in a bumper and a Grade 1 novice hurdle respectively. Henry is perhaps the best target trainer of all in recent Festivals, his hit rate at the last five being a scarcely believable one in seven. Foxy Jacks has run cross country here three times and failed to get round twice, though he did win on the other occasion! That was in the November handicap last year in which the heavyweights Delta Work and Galvin both went missing, presumed not off.

Best of the (limited) British defence is probably Mister Coffey, a perma-bridesmaid trained by Nicky Henderson. He’s finished second in five of his last six starts, a run that includes the G1 Scilly Isles Novices’ Chase of last year and the Kim Muir a month later. He looked a strong stayer at last season’s Festival and this test might be just the ticket.

But he’s no bargain, especially if his jockey – presumably Rachael Blackmore though she has another option – allows others a head start. O’Faolains Boy set a fair but not searing tempo, aided and abetted by Smad Place, in 2016, the beneficiary of which was the handily-ridden Don Cossack. And in 2015, Coneygree made every yard under an inspired ride from Nico de Boinville. De Boinville’s measurement of pace there was brilliant, saving enough to repel a brace of Irish challengers up the hill to the line. In 2018, Native River won from Might Bite, the pair engaging in a ding-dong skirmish from flag fall; in theory, both should have wilted and been passed. This was definitely not a winner I could have found as it looked on paper beforehand that they’d have at it exactly as they did, an approach in this sort of cauldron which typically spells c-u-r-t-a-i-n-s.

The NAP was finally back in the winners enclosure yesterday so hopefully we can put a run of winners together now. We head to Beverley on Tuesday afternoon and GOLDEN WAR can open his account. This son of Churchill ran his best race to date when beaten a length over C&D last month and given that form has been well advertised since I think he can Bolts Up Daily go one better here. He’ll need to improve again probably but he’s been gelded since and the hood goes on too which should sharpen him up. Sydney Street left his debut run behind to finish third at Ffos Las last time and will be the danger if building on that again. Rich King also looks to have a future and he should do better at some point too.

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