Horse welfare debate helps highlight Grand National’s unrivalled status

There will never be a year when horse welfare is not an issue in the run-up to the Grand National, and that is, in a sense, a positive for the sport. It is a sign that the National retains its status as the biggest race of the year – in terms of audience, betting turnover, name recognition and pretty much any other measure you care to choose. Nearly two centuries after the first running in 1839, it still has deep roots in British culture as an annual sporting rite of spring.

Within the racing bubble too there are few subjects that raise hackles and generate debate quite like the National, not least because for many racegoers and punters it is the race that first stoked their interest in the sport. Significant changes to the fences and other conditions in recent years, with the aim of minimising the risk of serious or fatal injuries, have left some fans, at least, feeling it is no longer the same race that they fell in love with several decades ago.

Another view – one which I tend to share – is that the British Horseracing Authority and Aintree have done well to steer the National through some significant and necessary amendments while maintaining the sense of the race as a public spectacle. Critics from animal rights groups, which annually use the National as a wedge issue in their campaign to ban not just racing but the use of animals for anything at all, like to claim that the public is losing interest, but both the TV audience – in an ever more fractured media landscape – and the annual betting turnover figures tend to suggest otherwise.

Animal Rising protesters climbed into Aintree in 2023, trying to disrupt the race, with 118 people arrested for criminal damage and public nuisance offences. Photograph: Tim Goode/PA

And while statisticians may argue about whether even a dozen years’ worth of evidence is conclusive, there are definite signs, at least, of a steady reduction in the number of fallers and, by extension, the number of horses brought down. From 2014 to 2025 inclusive, the total number of fallers in the National has been: 8-8-4-4-6-4-5-4-4-0-3. The figures from 2024 and 2025, which are the first two runnings of the latest iteration of the National, with easier fences and a maximum field of 34, are the lowest and third-lowest this century.

None of the three falls last year resulted in a fatal injury, although Broadway Boy, who suffered a heavy fall when leading at Valentines on the second circuit, was subsequently retired from racing. Celebre D’Allen, however, collapsed after jumping the last and died two days later as the result of a respiratory infection.

Michael Nolan, Celebre D’Allen’s rider, was suspended for 10 days by the Aintree stewards for “continuing in the race when the horse appeared to have no more to give”. A postmortem found that while Celebre D’Allen’s “exercise-associated episode” did not lead directly to his death, his immune system had been “severely compromised” by overexertion and he could not fight off a subsequent bacterial infection.

The horse Celebre D’Allen died a few days after last year’s Grand National. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

Nolan, who suffered such sustained abuse on social media in the aftermath of last year’s National that he deleted his accounts, told the Racing Post that he was “more upset than anybody that something has happened”, and that he “went from travelling so easy and you can almost see the winning post from where you are, to getting off him and trying your best to help him”. If nothing else, his experience should serve as a reminder that while risk is ever-present in any race, the National magnifies the consequences of every incident and decision many times over.

National Hunt racing also heads towards Aintree after a Cheltenham festival at which four horses died: two in falls in hurdle events, one while galloping between fences, and the veteran Envoi Allen, a multiple winner at the meeting, who collapsed on the way back to the unsaddling enclosure after the Gold Cup.

Four fatalities was as many as the three previous festivals combined, and prompted the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) to issue a statement suggesting:“One death is too many – but the scale of fatalities reiterate the urgency that lessons must be learned – including what caused the loss of life, decision making during the race and any future means of prevention.” The statement added: “These incidents are clearly at odds with the UK’s status as a nation of animal lovers.”

Learning lessons is exactly what the racing authorities have been doing for years. It is why the rate of fatal injuries has steadily and clearly fallen over the past two decades, at Aintree and Cheltenham and also in jump racing as whole.

The RSPCA has its own issues and image to worry about, as it competes with more aggressively strident rights-based groups for attention and funds. Its latest intervention does add somewhat to the annual sense of nervous anticipation, however, as the sport packs its bags and prepares to head to Liverpool for the one race of the year that still towers above all others.

Pritchard’s costly brain fade

Callum Pritchard has had a breakthrough season over jumps but his challenge for the conditional jockeys’ title appears to have come to a premature conclusion after he was banned for 12 days at Plumpton on Sunday, having appeared to ease down on his horse a circuit too soon in a stayers’ novice chase.

Callum Pritchard and Hold Your Fort won the Sodexo Live! Veterans’ Handicap Chase at Ascot last month. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images

It was the kind of mortifying, brain fade error that all of us have made at some point, not least in the learning phase of our lives, and some may argue that the sheer embarrassment alone is almost punishment enough.

Like so many of the rules of racing around similar issues, however, the penalty is about deterrence too and designed to maintain punters’ faith in the integrity of the sport and the betting markets it generates. Pritchard’s mount, Sweet Nightingale, was the 2-1 joint favourite, and what ended up being a horribly inefficient ride meant she finished only third of the four runners.

The backers who watched their money going west can at least be sure that Pritchard too will take a hit to his pocket and that his fellow jockeys will have been reminded of the need to keep count of the circuits.

And it could also be pointed out – as the late John McCririck invariably did at similar moments – that the penalty for a similar offence in some jurisdictions would be closer to months than days.