NEWS | PREMIUM TIPS | STAKING | RESULTS | PLAY
NEWS | PREMIUM TIPS | STAKING | RESULTS | PLAY
Before you read our five picks, here is something worth knowing. Star Sports, our recommended bookmaker partner, are offering all customers, new and existing, each way insurance on the Grand National. Place an each way bet on the race and if your horse finishes out of the places but completes the course, Star Sports will refund your place stake as a free bet up to £25. In the most unpredictable race in the world, with 34 horses jumping 30 fences over four miles, that is not a small thing. Get set up at Star Sports before Saturday afternoon. Get set up with Star Sports here
18+ New and existing customers. Place an Each-Way bet on the 4.00pm Aintree (Randox Grand National Handicap Chase – 11/04/26) and Star Sports will refund your place stake as a Free Bet if your horse finishes out of the places but completes the course and is listed as a finisher. Maximum refund £25. Free Bet credited within 24 hours after weigh-in. Full T&Cs apply. GambleAware.org
There are sporting events that stop a nation, and then there is the Grand National. Not a nation. The world. Six hundred million people across 140 countries will pause their lives on Saturday afternoon and turn their attention to a strip of Merseyside turf where thirty four horses and their riders will attempt something that has no equivalent in sport. Four miles and two and a half furlongs. Thirty fences. Becher’s Brook. The Chair. Valentine’s. Canal Turn. Names that have passed into the English folklore not just as racecourse geography but as shorthand for everything that is dramatic, unpredictable and utterly magnificent about horse racing at its most extreme. The Grand National has been run since 1839. The first winner was a horse called Lottery. In the 187 years since, it has produced more stories, more heartbreak, more glory and more genuine sporting theatre than any other event in the racing calendar. Red Rum. Foinavon. Devon Loch. Aldaniti. Tiger Roll. Every generation gets its own Grand National legend, and every April, the race reminds us why it has survived wars, pandemics and every form of modernisation the sport has thrown at it.
The very first running in 1839 produced an episode that still resonates today. Captain Martin Becher, a retired army officer who had helped organise the early Aintree meetings and was close friends with course owner William Lynn, was in second place when his horse Conrad hit the brook fence and catapulted him into the water on the far side. As the field thundered overhead, Becher was forced to crouch in the deepest part of the brook to avoid being trampled. When the dust had settled, he emerged with a remark that has never been bettered in racing literature. He had not known, he said, how dreadful water tastes without the benefit of whisky. That brook has carried his name ever since, and every April it claims its victims anew. The race was won that day by Lottery, the 5/1 favourite, a horse whose name felt less like a coincidence and more like a prophecy. You need a slice of luck to win the Grand National. You always have.
The race has never been short of extraordinary stories in the years between. In 1967 a 100/1 outsider called Foinavon was so far behind the carnage caused by a loose horse at the fence that now bears his name that he was the only runner able to pick through the chaos and jump it cleanly first time. He won the National at odds that would have seemed ludicrous before the race and perfectly reasonable after it. In 1973 an Australian horse called Crisp powered to a thirty three length lead and looked set to win the race by a distance before Red Rum, trained on the Southport sands by Ginger McCain, hunted him down in the final strides in one of the most astonishing finishes the sport has ever produced. Red Rum won the National three times in total, was runner-up twice, and never fell in the race. He is buried by the winning post at Aintree, watching over every finish as if he is still there. In 1981 Aldaniti, a horse that had survived a catalogue of serious injuries that would have ended most careers, won the race carrying a jockey, Bob Champion, who had fought and beaten cancer. In 2001 Red Marauder won after only four of the original forty runners completed the course. In 2009 Mon Mome won at 100/1. In 2022 Noble Yeats, a seven year old, became the youngest winner since Bogskar in 1940 at a price of 50/1. Last year Nick Rockett, a 33/1 shot trained by Willie Mullins and ridden by his son Patrick, led home an extraordinary one two three for the Closutton stable in one of the most dominant displays of trainer supremacy the race has ever witnessed. Every single year, the Grand National writes a new chapter. The only certainty is that nobody knows what is in it before the tape goes up.
What has changed, however, and this is crucial context for everything that follows, is the nature of the race itself. In 2013 the fences were modified, with wooden cores replaced by plastic and the drop landings levelled out. The field size was reduced to thirty four runners in 2024. The minimum handicap rating was raised, and a standing start introduced. The effect has been transformative. In the twelve renewals before the 2013 modifications, only a third of runners completed the course and there were over twice as many fallers as we see today. In the twelve renewals since, completion rates have risen by ten percent and fallers have more than halved. In 2024 not a single horse fell. The race is safer, the field is stronger, and the horses that win it now are a different type entirely to those that dominated twenty years ago. Where once a lowly rated, experienced jumper could navigate the chaos and win on guts alone, the modern Grand National rewards class, jumping technique, and the kind of handicap weight that allows a quality horse to travel within itself for four miles before producing its effort. Nine of the last ten winners were aged nine or younger. The last British trained winner outside of the Lucinda Russell operation was Many Clouds in 2015. Irish stables have won seven of the last nine. The race has changed. The data tells you exactly how.
Still need a bookmaker for Saturday? Star Sports are offering all customers each way insurance on the Grand National. Place an each way bet and if your horse finishes out of the places but completes the course, your place stake comes back as a free bet up to £25. With five selections below, now is the time to get set up. Get set up with Star Sports here
The Ultima, the Cross Country and the Bobbyjo Chase have all produced National winners in recent years. The average winning price over the last decade is 20/1, which tells you everything about where the value consistently hides. Not at the head of the market, and not in triple figures. Somewhere in the middle, where a well prepared horse with the right profile arrives without the weight of expectation but with every statistical box quietly ticked. At Romping Home Racing we have run every one of the thirty four declared runners through fifteen key trends and what follows are the five horses whose profiles we believe the market has not fully respected. These are our selections for the 2026 Randox Grand National.
Willie Mullins is bringing nine horses to this race, which means he has roughly a quarter of the entire field. You could argue that spreads his resources thin, but that argument collapses when you realise that his last three Grand National horses to win this race Hedgehunter, I Am Maximus and Nick Rockett each came from a deep Closutton squad. The yard’s approach has always been to run the numbers and let the best horse win. What makes Champ Kiely genuinely intriguing is not that he is the stable’s first string, because he clearly is not, but rather that Patrick Mullins himself has been quietly and persistently pointing at him as the one that the market has not properly priced. Patrick won this race last year on Nick Rockett and knows better than almost anyone what a Grand National winner looks like. When he talks, it is worth listening.
Champ Kiely won Grade One races over both hurdles and fences, including the Lawlor’s of Naas Novice Hurdle and then, in his final start of last season, an extraordinary performance at the Punchestown Festival where he routed Ballyburn by six lengths at 22/1, winning the Grade One Dooley Insurance Group Champion Novice Chase with Danny Mullins producing a masterclass of patience and timing. Ballyburn was a horse who had been one of the most hyped novice chasers in Ireland, and Champ Kiely destroyed him while carrying a penalty. This is a horse of genuine class who has simply been lost in a season that has not gone to plan, slipping up at Leopardstown over Christmas and failing to fire at Tramore in what was a race on the wrong terms. He comes here on a 68 day break, which sits on the outer edge of the freshness trend but is perfectly manageable for a horse of his profile, and his rating of 157 carrying 11 stone 1 pound places him right within the optimal band. He is ten years old, which is a slight concern against the age trends, but his career has been disrupted enough that he is nowhere near as battle worn as his age suggests. Danny Mullins reunites with him for the first time since that Punchestown Grade One. The market has him at 25/1. Patrick Mullins thinks the market is wrong.
His name translates from French as Perceval the Welshman, a Knight of the Round Table and loyal servant to King Arthur. It is the kind of name that belongs in a Grand National story, and the circumstances around this horse are compelling enough to match the mythology. He is owned by JP McManus, the most powerful owner in National Hunt racing, a man who has won this race three times and who this year has six runners in the field. If McManus wins for a fourth time he becomes the most successful owner in the history of the race. Perceval Legallois is not his most obvious route to that milestone, but Gavin Cromwell’s history of getting horses to peak for target races demands respect, and the deliberate quietness of this horse’s preparation has Cromwell’s fingerprints all over it.
Last year he was sent off at 10/1 for the Grand National and fell at Valentine’s Brook on the first circuit. He has had just two runs since that fall, and Cromwell’s own assessment is that on ratings he looks well handicapped. Timeform specifically flagged him as interesting off a 2lb lower mark than last year, and his only completed run this season was a fourth at Tramore on New Year’s Day behind Heart Wood, the horse that went on to win the Ryanair Chase at Cheltenham. That is not form to dismiss lightly. Harry Cobden, JP McManus’s incoming number one jockey, has taken the ride. Cobden is a rider at the absolute peak of his powers and does not take rides in Grand Nationals without believing the horse has a genuine chance. He carries 10 stone 9 pounds, which is perfectly placed within the weight trends, he is nine years old, he is Irish trained, and Cromwell is having a remarkable season with two Grand National qualifiers in the final field. The fall last year means the race is unfinished business. At 20/1 he is the quiet danger that the pre race noise has almost entirely drowned out.
Gordon Elliott does not talk horses up without reason. He won this race with Silver Birch in 2007, with Tiger Roll in 2018 and with Tiger Roll again in 2019. He knows what a Grand National horse looks like, and when he stood in front of the cameras before declaration day and said of Stellar Story that he was very, very well-handicapped if you go back on his old form, and that this will be his first run in a handicap and off 10 stone 11 pounds he could be dangerous, that is not a trainer going through the motions. That is a trainer who has identified a horse the market has not properly assessed.
Stellar Story won the 2023 Albert Bartlett at the Cheltenham Festival as a novice hurdler. He beat the King George winner The Jukebox Man over fences at Cheltenham, a performance that demonstrated genuine class at the highest level. He then ran in the Bobbyjo Chase at Fairyhouse in February as his prep, finishing third, which is exactly the route the last two Grand National winners took before their Aintree victories. He is owned by Gigginstown House Stud, the operation that backed Tiger Roll’s back to back wins and which has a fierce understanding of what this race requires. He is nine years old, he carries 10 stone 11 pounds within the optimal weight band, and his official rating of 153 sits cleanly in the 146 to 160 sweet spot that nine of the last eleven winners have come from. He wears blinkers and a tongue strap, which for some horses is the difference between a flat performance and a career best. Elliott has gone on record saying the ground question is his only reservation, and the going at Aintree on Saturday is forecast to be good to soft, which means that reservation is close to being answered. Elliott’s three National winners were all trained with patience and purpose. Stellar Story has that feel. Robert Dunne takes the ride with Elliott’s blessing. At 25/1, this is the kind of price that has National written on it.
On the tenth of March 2026, in the Trustmarque Ultima Handicap Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, a nine year old called Johnnywho beat the second favourite Jagwar by half a length at 18/1. It was the only ride Richie McLernon had at the entire Festival. It was the first race Johnnywho had run since a wind operation. He was number 36 on the weights list and needed two late withdrawals simply to get into the final field for this years national. Jonjo O’Neill, one of the great targeting trainers in the history of National Hunt racing, a man who trained Don’t Push It to win this race in 2010 for JP McManus and who seven years as a jockey never completed the Grand National course before becoming a trainer of genuine Aintree magic, sent this horse to Cheltenham as part of a very deliberate plan that ended at Aintree. He carries just 10 stone 4 pounds, the lightest weight of any serious contender in the field.
The Ultima to National connection is well established. Six of the last seven Grand National winners ran in the Ultima, the Bobbyjo or the Cross Country on their final start before Aintree. Corach Rambler won the Ultima and then won the National. Johnnywho won the Ultima and the trend says look very carefully. He is owned by JP McManus, in those famous green and gold silks that have carried three previous Grand National winners. His pedigree is Califet out of Howaya Pet, a breeding that suggests stamina reserves the bare form has not yet fully exposed. And the jockey story is one of the most powerful in the race. Richie McLernon was on Sunnyhillboy for Jonjo O’Neill in the 2012 Grand National, beaten by a nose in one of the closest finishes the race has ever produced. He has been close to this race his whole career. He rode Johnnywho that day at Cheltenham with patience, poise and perfectly timed aggression. If you want someone who understands what it takes to get a horse to the line at Aintree, McLernon has lived that story. At 12/1 he is not the longest price on our shortlist, but value in the Grand National is not just about the number. It is about the fit, and Johnnywho fits this race profile as cleanly as anything in the field.
Nobody is shouting about Final Orders. The television previews have not lingered on him. The national newspapers have devoted their column inches to I Am Maximus, Panic Attack and the Mullins cavalry. That silence suits us perfectly, because when you strip away the noise and run this horse through the data, what you find is a profile that sits in the same territory as some of the most important Grand National winners of the modern era.
Final Orders won the Cross Country Chase at the Cheltenham Festival last month. That connection matters enormously and it is drastically underweighted in the public conversation. Tiger Roll completed the Cross Country and Grand National double twice, in 2018 and in 2019. Gordon Elliott has also run Silver Birch, Cause Of Causes and Delta Work in the Cross Country before they finished first, second and third in subsequent Grand Nationals. The Cross Country at Cheltenham is not a novelty race. It is a test of jumping intelligence, adaptability to unusual obstacles, and an ability to maintain rhythm and momentum over fences that require thought rather than just power. Those are precisely the qualities the modern Grand National rewards. Gavin Cromwell trained him to win at Cheltenham with a front running display that his trainer described as an unbelievable performance, and Cromwell himself noted that on ratings Final Orders looks well handicapped for Aintree. He carries just 10 stone 5 pounds, he is ten years old which is against the age trend, but his form figures heading into this race tell a story of a horse peaking at the right moment. He fell at Valentine’s Brook in the Topham Chase some years ago on his only previous run over the Grand National fences, but those fences are demonstrably more forgiving than they were in that era, and a horse who has just jumped the Cross Country at Cheltenham with the fluency he showed has no jumping questions left to answer. Conor Stone-Walsh keeps the ride following their Cheltenham success. The same jockey, the same trainer, the same horse in form, a race that history says is pointed directly at horses like this. At 20/1, Final Orders is the Romping Home Racing number one selection for the 2026 Randox Grand National.
All five RHR selections for the 2026 Randox Grand National are best followed with Star Sports, our recommended bookmaker partner. Their All Over The Place offer gives every customer each way insurance on the race, place stake refunded as a free bet up to £25 if your horse finishes but misses the places. Get set up before Saturday’s 4.00pm off. Get set up with Star Sports here
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