All eyes head to Fairyhouse on Monday for the 2024 Irish Grand National, which is set to be a hugely competitive renewal and will see a big field go to post for what is one of the Easter highlights on the track. Our man Dave Young has taken a look back at the recent history of the race and picked out all the key Irish Grand National Trends ahead of the 2024 running…
IRISH GRAND NATIONAL TRENDS
- All of the last 10 winners were Irish-Trained
- 9 of the last 10 winners had won right-handed
- 9 of the last 10 winners were 9yos or younger
- 9 of the last 10 winners had won over at least 3m previously
- 7 of the last 10 winners carried 10-8 or less
- 7 of the last 10 winners had raced within the last 6 weeks
- 6 of the last 10 winners were priced 16/1+ (5 were 20/1+ & 3 were 40/1+)
Selection criteria
I’m going to dish out three points for ticking each of the three trends which are true of nine of the last 10 winners, so right-handed winner, 9yo or younger and having won over 3 miles+ already. I’ll give two points for carrying 10-8 or less (although that is subject to change) and having raced inside the last 42 days. I’ll finally add one point for anything currently priced 20/1+.
Who makes the shortlist?
At the time of writing there are 26 runners still in contention but by using the above scoring method we can whittle this down to eight. The two shorter priced runners who ticked everything bar being 20/1+ were INTENSE RAFFLES & HARTUR D’ARC (worth remembering these two).
We know this is a very much a target race and trainers profile their horses for it, but I wanted to reduce the shortlist, so I extended two more recent trends to the eight who achieved perfect scores.
- 12 of the last 16 winners had won this season
- 12 of the last 16 winners had two or more chase wins to their names
After this we have two perfect scorers left but I will just state that both INTENSE RAFFLES & HARTUR D’ARC also ticked these extra boxes so are certainly the trend-tickers from the front end of the market. We also have two runners who have won this season but haven’t had two or more wins who are worth noting too.
Perfect scorers
- WHERE’S FRANKIE
Next Best
- WHERE IT ALL BEGAN (top price 20/1 with just one firm only now)
- DAILY PRESENT (still a general 20/1 shot)
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