NEWS | PREMIUM TIPS | STAKING | RESULTS | PLAY
NEWS | PREMIUM TIPS | STAKING | RESULTS | PLAY
There are racedays, and then there are Scottish racedays. On Saturday the 18th of April the lens turns north, and Ayr, that beautiful left handed course on the south west coast, stages the 2026 Scottish Grand National. Four miles, twenty seven fences, twenty one runners, and a prize pot of two hundred thousand pounds for the horse that has the stamina, the jumping and the fortune to come home in front.
Scotland’s biggest race is older than most of the pubs in the town that hosts it. First run in 1858 as the West of Scotland Grand National over stone walls in Renfrewshire, it eventually settled at Ayr in 1966 and has been growing in stature ever since. The roll of honour is remarkable. Three horses have won it three times, Couvrefeu II, Southern Hero and Queen’s Taste, a feat that will almost certainly never be matched. But only one horse has ever won Ayr and Aintree in the same year. On a warm April afternoon in 1974, Red Rum, fresh from his second Grand National win at Liverpool three weeks earlier, carried eleven stone thirteen pounds to victory over Proud Tarquin on a day when the roar of the eighteen thousand crowd at Ayr was compared in the Scottish press to the Hampden Roar itself. No horse has ever done it since. There is a statue of Red Rum at Ayr racecourse for a reason.
The modern race belongs to the heavyweights of the sport. Paul Nicholls has won it twice in the last nine years, Willie Mullins has won the last two, and Nigel Twiston-Davies has three renewals to his name. The average winning starting price over the last decade is twelve and a half to one, and the last outright winning favourite was Young Kenny way back in 1999. This is a race where the market rarely rules, where stamina pays better than class, and where the horse you need is usually found somewhere in the middle of the betting rather than at the head of it.
Willie Mullins has just one runner this year in Road To Home, a sharp reduction from his six strong raiding parties of the last two seasons, and with the trainers’ championship out of reach the Closutton operation is coming to Scotland with intent rather than numbers. Joseph O’Brien heads the market with Kim Roque. Lucinda Russell flies the Scottish flag with King Of Answers. And Paul Nicholls, a trainer whose Scottish National pedigree runs deep, has saddled two of the most interesting horses in the race. Ground conditions are forecast to be soft, good to soft in places, with more rain likely before the off. Stamina is everything. Jumping is everything. Luck, as ever, decides the rest.
These are not system selections. Our daily betting systems at RHR do not assess major handicaps of this nature, and nothing that follows is being tracked in our results. What follows are two horses we like the look of for the Scottish National, chosen on form, narrative and a proper read of the race. Take them as opinion, take them for interest, take them as you will. But we fancy both.
Every year the Scottish National throws up a progressive young stayer off a light weight who has been winning freely in lower grade and arrives at Ayr ready to step up. Joe Farrell was one at thirty three to one. Takingrisks was another at twenty fives. Wayward Prince before them, same profile, same price range. This year the horse that fits the mould is Chasingouttheblues. He is a seven year old trained by Mark Walford in Yorkshire who has won three of his last four starts, the last of them at Newcastle, and he comes into this race carrying just ten stone nine pounds, which is the weight profile that has produced fourteen of the last twenty two Scottish National winners.
He has never run beyond three miles and a furlong, which is the obvious question, but everything about the way he travels and finishes his races says that four miles will be the making of him rather than the undoing of him. He jumps well, he stays well within himself, and he is reaching Ayr in the form of his life. Jamie Hamilton takes the ride. The market has been working on him all week. At a double figure price, he is the progressive outsider this race so often rewards, and we like him a lot.
Paul Nicholls has won the Scottish Grand National twice in the last nine years as we mentioned above, with Vicente in 2016 and again with Vicente in 2017. Sam Twiston-Davies was on board both times. That partnership, at that racecourse, in that race, has a record that almost nobody else can match. And on Saturday they reunite on a horse who arrives at Ayr off the back of a Midlands National victory that was as emphatic as anything you will see in a long distance handicap all season.
Isaac Des Obeaux stormed home at Uttoxeter in March, beating Git Maker by eight lengths over four miles and two furlongs, always prominent and finishing through the line as though the trip was nothing to him. It was a clear career best. He is eight years old, which is right in the sweet spot for this race. He is rated one hundred and thirty nine, which is exactly the kind of mark that wins Scottish Nationals. He is up seven pounds for the Midlands and has something to prove on soft ground, but the horse beneath the jockey, the trainer behind the horse, and the history of the race in front of them all point the same way. This is Nicholls at Ayr with Sam Twiston-Davies on board and a marathon winner to send out. If that is not a Scottish National profile, nothing is.
There will be fallers, there will be loose horses, there will be unlikely front runners blowing up on the home turn and outsiders staying on past the line. That is Ayr. That is the Scottish National. Saturday is going to be brilliant.
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