Donald McCain’s Peddlers Cross maintained his unbeaten record with an impressive display in the John Smith’s Mersey Novices’ Hurdle at Aintree.

IT’S Grand National Day again and last year proved, with a 100-1 winner, that the National is the National whatever way you look at it. You can take form, ground, jockeys, trainers and whatever else you like but, at the end of the day, it’s the National and anything can win it.

SOMETHING had always told Bertie Broderick that his son Conor would own a racehorse one day and he was finally proven right a little under two years ago — just three days before he passed away.

IRAQI officials and aides to a radical Shi'ite cleric were yesterday trying to negotiate an end to nine days of fighting in the holy city of Najaf after US forces suspended an offensive against Muqtada al-Sadr's militia.