The Grand National – Winner Trends

With the exceptional challenge that the race presents it's no surprise that many punters, regular and once a year alike view the Grand National spectacular as difficult to solve as the lottery but some exceptionally strong trends have developed over the years which can be a useful aid to winner finding.

Indeed, for reasons of weight, age, official rating and previous National experience, well over two-thirds of the field can normally be discounted when searching for the winner. Let's take a look at some of the stronger statistical trends that surround the "Great Race".

The age of a horse is probably one if the easiest facts to look up and those aged seven and under are going to struggle – you have to go back to the 1940 running to find the last successful horse aged seven and a further 28 years beyond that to find the last six-year-old who was victorious in this race. At the other end of the age scale those in their teenage years are always going to struggle – in fact no teenager has won for 89 years and we have not had one of that age in the frame since 1969.

You would think that stamina would be a prime requisite for a Grand National runner but year after year punters get sucked into thinking that horses that have never won over 3 miles are magically going to stay the 4M 4F of the National. Every single winner of the National since Gay Trip in 1970 had previously won over three miles or further over fences, so the claim that two-and-a-half milers make perfect Grand National contenders is misleading.

Those two simple statistics can quite often rule out plenty of the runners in the field – but if you add a few more simple trends then you can quite quickly cut down a complex looking field to a few strong candidates. Other areas that you should consider are ones of experience – all of the last ten winners have had at least a double figure number of starts over fences. The advent of in-play betting has also made the Grand National puzzle easier to solve.

The Grand National is now a far classier race than it was and it should also pay to examine your selections ability to be operate in this class - of the last ten winners all had demonstrated their class to win this race by previously landing a Listed or Graded (Class A or 1) race.

There are more detailed and complex statistics surrounding the National but just applying those above should give you more chance of finding the winner.