In television, they call them main-eventers: tennis fans for the two weeks of Wimbledon, mad about rugby on a Six Nations weekend, curling experts during the Winter Olympics – and horse-racing savants when the Grand National comes around.
Such fly-by fans, the once-a-year punters, are no more or less valuable to the racing industry, albeit they do contribute less revenue than those diehard fans who are checking results from Fakenham one day and Ffos Las the next. The millions of extra eyeballs that races like the Grand National brings put a much-needed spotlight on the sport – under which it can it can shine or shrink.
And for all the reasons it captures the imagination – the drama, the difficulty, the history – the Grand National also inspires anger.
Help within 60 seconds of a fall
Since 2000, 17 horses have died as a result of the race, either through a fall or exhaustion. But those in charge insist horses have never been safer in racing, both at Aintree and across the UK. According to the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), faller rates are down nationally and the fatal injury rate in horse racing is now as low as 0.22 per cent. That is one in every 455 runners.
That said, around 278 runners are due to race in the three-day Grand National Festival. By those numbers, there’s a 50:50 chance that one won’t come back.
“This year, we’ve invested a lot in our water provision for the horses, both during and after the race,” Sulekha Varma, Aintree’s clerk of the course, tells The i Paper.
“So any horses that are pulled up or a bit tired or too hot, we’ve actually massively upgraded the water that we have available around the course and in the pull up area. Our washdown area was already the largest in British horse-racing but we’ve increased the size so it’s 13 by 20 metres, and put more troughs and hoses in.
Jockeys and horses’ welfare is a top priority at Aintree (Photo: Getty)“Like any athlete, that period of cool-down is really important after exertion.
“There are 12 specialist equine vets who have a variety of specialisms on site, we have orthopaedic specialists too, out on the course but also in the stable yard.
“There are 10 doctors and nine ambulances on site for all three days racing, and then we have around 60 ground staff and fence attendants, who are there to manage any incidents on course and to make sure that help gets to any horse or jockey, we say within one minute; in all realism, it’s a lot faster than that.”
‘We still want it to be exciting’
It is all designed to mitigate the risk of what sometimes get called “equine fatalities”: what most people would call horse deaths. Two years ago, the race itself was reshaped significantly, with runners reduced from 40 to 34 and the distance from start line to first fence shortened.
“We’ve also introduced standing starts for all races over the Grand National fences… so that the horses can’t build up quite as much of a head of speed,” adds Varma. The course is already vastly changed even from 20 years ago, with the majority of the famous fences now rebuilt with plastic, rather than wooden, cores to make them more forgiving.
There will always be naysayers, on all sides. Racing traditionalists will grumble about the smaller race, the shorter run to the first fence, the dilution of a central part of the Great British Sporting Summer.
“It’s a balance,” says Varma. “We still want it to be an exciting spectacle. We want it to be competitive. One of the real successes we feel we’ve had in the last 10 to 15 years is we’ve seen the quality of horses taking part really improve.
“In the past, it would be a rarity for a Gold Cup horse to run in a Grand National. Now, it’s something that trainers will talk about quite readily, which for us confirms trainers’ confidence in the course. The Grand National is not the risky race that it once was.”
The Grand National still garners millions of viewers on TV and online (Photo: Getty)It’s of course all relative. Britain is a nation of animal lovers for whom the death of a single horse is difficult to stomach. For some, it is unacceptable. Only three years ago a protest by Animal Rising succeeded in delaying the start of the race. This year, a different group called Animal Aid are calling for a boycott of the race, asking the public not to watch or bet on the race. They would ban the sport altogether.
Isobel McNally, campaign manager for the group, told The i Paper: “All of these little welfare tweaks and stuff, they’re not good enough. They’re not eradicating harm being caused to horses. The only way to eradicate harm being caused to horses is to abolish horse-racing altogether.
“This isn’t working. Horses are continuing to die, and even the ones that don’t die, they are suffering, because that’s the nature of the industry. This isn’t something that a horse would choose to do if they if they got given a choice.
“We are most vocal around Aintree is because it’s this highlight of the industry’s calendar, and it has historically been a very, very deadly one.”
‘Horse welfare is important because it’s the right thing to do’
The strength of feeling at both ends of the spectrum is reflected in the public opinion; YouGov polling numbers from 2024 showed that more than half of people were concerned about horse and jockey welfare in the race, but virtually the same number felt the race had become safer. Half also believed the race was cruel – yet more than seven million tuned in to watch the race on TV that year, a figure that makes it one of the most watched sporting events of the year.
“It’s our responsibility to do the best we can for the horses, firstly because it’s the right thing to do and secondly because it’s important to the general public,” says James Given, a former trainer who is now the BHA’s director of equine health and welfare. He recognises that the so-called “social licence to operate”, a term that refers to whether something is generally socially acceptable, is not automatically granted.
“If we lose society’s confidence that we’re doing what we can to not just maintain but improve welfare standards and safety outcomes, society can remove the concept of that licence.”
Around 75,000 people will turn out at Aintree for the Grand National on Saturday (Photo: Getty)According to audience data collected by the BHA themselves, horse welfare is one of the biggest concerns about racing among the general public, making it, if nothing else, a commercially sensible focus. You would think the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) are natural enemies of the horse-racing industry, but in fact the two organisations are trying to work together on best practices and areas they can improve.
“We would like to see further improvements to the welfare [of horses],” says the RSPCA’s scientific and policy manager Ashleigh Brown, who also has a background in equine welfare.
“We’re concerned about the levels of fatalities that we see. We’re concerned about the continued use of the whip for encouragement and some of the research that shows that that’s associated with an increased risk of fatalities and catastrophic injuries as well.”
The RSPCA represents the most middle voice on this divisive topic. They are Britain’s largest animal welfare organisation, but they are not calling for abolition like Animal Aid or similar groups.
‘Racing has the wealth and expertise to push equine welfare forward’
Brown adds: “One of the reasons that we have the position that we do is that we engage with the horse racing industry explicitly for the purposes of advocating for further welfare improvement.
“We recognise that there have been examples of improvement over the past several years, which obviously is positive, and we want to encourage that, but we also recognise that there’s considerable scope and need for further improvement – and there’s the wealth and expertise within the industry to push that forward.”
If horse racing can be a greater force for good in the equine world, it is in exactly that way.
“We’ve just started a commitment to start working with an American university around looking at biomarkers for horses that can have fractures,” Given adds.
“It might come to nothing. But if we can get this bit of work working, that’s a huge jump forward.”
But he concedes that it is as much about perception as it is real progress. “We’ve got to show that we’re doing as best we can and continuing to strive as hard as we can to improve the outcomes, improve the welfare, improve the safety for our four-legged friends.
“If we’re not being seen to do the best we can, then that’s a justifiable criticism. But for some people, whatever we do will not be enough until they ban us or try to ban us.
“So it’s trying to just keep doing what we can, what we’re doing. Do more. Do better.”
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