National Consolation Under Consideration Aintree have ruled out the possibility of introducing a consolation race for the John Smith's Grand National in the near-future.Officials at the Liverpool track are considering the idea of staging a race for horses that miss the cut in the four-and-a-half-mile marathon.The proposal is still at an early stage and Aintree managing director Charles Barnett is planning to maintain a watching brief before making a decision on adding such a race to the Grand National meeting.'The situation is that we have had a full field for the last few years and quite a lot of horses are being balloted out,' he told At The Races.'It's only in single figures now but if it got to the stage were a lot of horses were balloted out, we would have to look seriously at what options we had available.'It certainly would not (come in next year), it would take a fair while beyond that because I doubt we would get that number of horses wanting to run in the race who would be available to do so.'We have got the Topham which we like and the Fox Hunters on the Thursday so it would also be a question of when we run it.'(C) PA Sport
