The pre-race favourite for the Grand National has not prevailed at Aintree since 2010 - a period stretching eight years and the longest streak for over two decades - and it suggests that anyone interested in betting on and following the race should be focusing their attention away from the odds. You may prefer a specific trainer or take a liking to a horse which has been bred in a particular country, but the smart approach may be to take a look at a horse's age and weight.
The next Grand National does not take place until April 6 so the runners and riders are yet to be determined, but you can already begin to get an idea of what brackets you should be looking at come the start of 2019. The most recent winner of the race - Tiger Roll - was aged eight and was carrying weight of 10 stone 13 pounds. Statistically, that is not far off what you should be looking for as your "perfect weight", with five of the last eight winners having weighed in half a stone either side of that figure. Many Clouds - the 2015 victor - is an exception to the belief that nothing close to 12 stone could possibly win after emerging victorious at 11 stone nine pounds, but that is the heaviest winner since Red Rum in 1977.
As far as the age is concerned, no horse seven or below has ever won the Grand National, but that is not to say that you should necessarily be dismissing them. A horse aged eight or below only prevailed on one occasion during the 15 stagings of the race between 2000 and 2014, but no horse older than nine has won any of the last four races! Three of those winners have been aged eight, which goes completely against the trend set in the decade-and-a-half beforehand. There is an argument that they are simply anomalies, but is it possible to have so many of them over a short space of time? The ground has been varied for each of those races, too, with conditions ranging from good to soft to heavy, so you cannot necessarily place too much emphasis on whether it has rained or not.
The weight appears to be a simpler factor to be decisive on: look somewhere between 10 stone seven pounds and 11 stone six pounds and you should not go wrong. However, a pattern is starting to emerge that the event is becoming a younger horse's race. Two of the last three races have been the slowest in recent memory, but it still did not let in the older runners. Until proven otherwise, selecting a horse either aged eight or nine appears to be the way to go.
