Which trainers are known for their Aintree Grand National plots? Aintree is the last key stop on the National Hunt express, as the Cheltenham Festival has been and gone. Turf Flat racing will take centre stage in the next month or so but Aintree’s Grand National Festival is definitely something to get excited about. The main event is obviously the Grand National and the £1,000,000 event is very hard to win, as it’s always ferociously competitive. If you want to come out on top, you need to hatch a plan well in advance and we’ve picked a few trainers who are well known for doing so. Willie Mullins Starting with the most obvious, Willie Mullins appears to have cracked the Grand National code, having won it for the last two years. Not only that, he trained three of the first four home last year and it’s fair to say that he knows what he’s doing when it comes to the National. Previously big weights have been a concern but the rule changes in recent years, such as the shorter trip and smaller fences, have made carrying big weights much easier. It also helps that he has a significant percentage of the best staying chasers in training! It has become apparent that the modern iteration of the Grand National requires a significant amount of class to win. Nick Rockett defied a mammoth mark of 163 to win with Patrick Mullins on board and stablemate (and the previous year’s winner) I Am Maximus was second off 167. Emmet Mullins Emmet Mullins is the up and coming king of handicap plots in general and he prepared the coup of all coups to land the 2022 Grand National with Noble Yeats. Landing the odds at 50/1, he was at the other end of the handicap to Willie Mullins’ recent winners and the plan was executed perfectly. The most interesting thing about this plan was that Noble Yeats was seven and a novice at the time, which defied two significant trends. No seven-year-old had won the race since Bogskar in 1940 and novices have a terrible recent record in the race. It just goes to show, if you have the right horse, come up with a good plan and execute the plan to perfection, stats and trends can be easily ignored. He’s fooled us once already so don’t be surprised if he manages to pull it off once again in the near future. Lucinda Russell There are few better trainers of marathon handicap chasers in Britain than Lucinda Russell and she has trained two winners of the Grand National since 2017. One For Arthur was the first to achieve the feat and he scored at odds of 14/1, with Derek Fox on board. Corach Rambler snuck in off a low weight to score back in 2023 and he went off as the 8/1 favourite, rather unsurprisingly. He had produced a career-best performance to win his second consecutive Ultima Handicap Chase at the Cheltenham Festival beforehand and clearly had plenty in hand off an unchanged mark at Aintree the following month.
