Last season's race

• Winner: Gracchus De Balme
• Jockey: Mr Huw Edwards
• Trainer: Joe J O'Shea
• Owner: Mr D A Malam
• Age: 9 Weight: 12st 0lbs
• Starting Price: 22/1
• Season Form Figures: 0612P
• Previous Best: 2nd - Walrus Open Hunters' Chase, Haydock (February 2025)

By Paul Jones

The Joe O’Shea-trained Gracchus De Balme won at 22/1 last season, but this has generally been a good race for leading fancies, with 26 of the last 30 winners located in the first five in the betting.

They certainly don’t hang about in this big-field amateur riders’ contest and, time and again, it pays to be in the front rank from early on as it does with the Topham and Grand Sefton over this trip on this course. Last year’s winner led from the sixth fence to the finishing post.

Ten of the last 23 winners ran at the Cheltenham Festival, so will his stablemate Barton Snow, who won the Princess Royal Challenge Cup Open Hunters’ Chase at Prestbury Park, bid to give the stable back-to-back winners at Aintree? He held off Its On The Line, who won this race in 2024, who was finishing second at Cheltenham for the fourth consecutive year. When Emmet Mullins’ charge won this race two years ago, he became the third consecutive winner to improve on their run in the race the previous year following Latenightpass and Famous Clermont.

Only seven winners at Cheltenham have even attempted to double up at Aintree (On The Fringe successfully did so twice) since Double Silk completed the double in 1993. The previous horse to complete the Cheltenham-Aintree double was Grittar in 1981, who went on to win the Grand National the following season. Prior to him it was Spartan Missile in 1979, who went on to finish second to Aldaniti in the Grand National two years later. Since those days, Eliogarty, Cavalero, Elegant Lord and Baby Run have all won both races but not in the same season.

Twelve of the last 19 winners had experienced the Grand National fences before and four of the last nine winners had either won or finished second the previous year and Bennys King has finished second twice in the last three editions. In victory last season, Gracchus De Balme beat Jet Plane by a length, with a further 2¼ lengths back to Lifetime Ambition in third.

Outside of Cheltenham, the Walrus Hunters’ Chase at Haydock in February has been the best guide, with three winners doubling up since 2008, and this season it was won easily by former Grand Annual winner Unexpected Party for Dan Skelton. Skelton has saddled the last three runners-up, so could his grey finally put him in the winner’s enclosure after this year’s running?

Only four of the last 41 winners have been aged under nine, so experience has counted and therefore we should mark up Its On The Line’s winning performance in 2024. He didn’t contest the 2025 renewal and is now in his prime at the age of nine. He was therefore also one of just five horses younger than eight have finished in the first three in the last 25 years.

In total contrast to the Cheltenham Festival equivalent are the early origins of most recent winners as 15 of the last 23 winners were former handicappers under Rules rather than being brought up through the point-to-point ranks unlike at Cheltenham where 30 of the last 36 winners started their career down the traditional point-to-point/hunter chase route.

Over the last 33 years only five winners had failed to win earlier in the season (but they do include three of the last eight), while all but seven winners won or placed on their previous start. I wouldn’t be too quick to overlook horses that finished out of the frame in the hunters’ chase at the Cheltenham Festival, but I certainly couldn’t entertain a hunter chaser that had failed to run up to expectations on its previous start outside of that festival race.

The Irish used to struggle, but Warne, On The Fringe (x2), Balnaslow and Its On The Line have won five of the last 11 runnings between them. Prior to that, only Elegant Lord in 1999 had won in the previous 34 years for the Irish.