Red Rum remains the most recent horse to have won more than one Grand National, but for the first six minutes of Saturday’s race it looked very much as though Many Clouds might also do that rare thing. The 2015 winner, burdened with top weight of 11st 10lb, gave Leighton Aspell another fine spin over these fences as far as the fifth-last, where he made a most uncharacteristic mistake that signalled the end of his challenge.
“I must admit, at the Canal Turn, I was getting very excited,” said his trainer, Oliver Sherwood.
“But he made a bit of a noise after that mistake and he will have a little wind operation now. The good news is that he’s 100%, absolutely fine.
“We’re just loading him up on the lorry now. That’s him for the season but we’ll be back here next year.
“He travelled great for a circuit and a half, he jumped super. It’s great that he took to the place again. I’m very proud of him.”
Aspell looked after his tiring mount, sent off as one of the 8-1 joint-favourites, and walked home from the Elbow, eventually crossing the line as the last of 16 finishers. “It was possibly the ground that found us out,” said the jockey, who had hoped to become the first to ride three consecutive National winners. “It was quite tough out there.”
There was to be no first success in the National for a woman rider, though both Katie Walsh and Nina Carberry continued deep into a race in which neither was expected to ride just three days before. Carberry inherited the ride on Sir Des Champs from Walsh’s injured brother, Ruby, and could be spotted creeping along in her usual patient manner on the line of fences back from Valentine’s.
But they got no further than The Chair fence in front of the stands, where Carberry visibly asked the horse to come up and he clearly put down on her, landing on the middle of the fence and falling.
Walsh and Ballycasey eventually moved onto the back of the leading group after the second Canal Turn. But the grey’s stamina was always doubtful for this distance and it gave out at the turn for home and Walsh was unseated two-out.
There was support through Saturdayfor Shutthefrontdoor, perhaps remembered by many punters as the horse who gave AP McCoy his final National ride a year ago. Bbut his stamina gave way that day and, on this more testing surface, it did so again as he faded from three-out to be ninth.
The soft ground also did for Saint Are, last year’s runner-up, and The Druids Nephew, widely thought to have been an unlucky loser when falling late on in the 2015 race. Both were pulled up this time.
