Grand National’s heavy going likely to make ‘new’ race look like older ones

Runners in action during last year’s Grand National meeting at Aintree. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

The latest set of changes to the Grand National, which aim to reduce the number of fallers and injuries, will be put to the test for the first time at Aintree on Saturday, when the maximum field will be cut to 34 runners for the first time and the first fence will be 60 yards closer to the start. The 11th fence will be two inches smaller, there will be no pre-race parade, and the sport’s crustier traditionalists will no doubt be fulminating about giving in to “the antis” and the inevitable slide towards the National being “just another race”.

But it will still look like the National to the millions watching at home, just as it did back in 1996, when only 27 runners went to post, and in 1999, when Bobbyjo and Paul Carberry beat 31 rivals. A cut of about five seconds in the time spent galloping towards the first will also go unnoticed by all but the pickiest of viewers.