So, some bookies (most of whom wouldn’t lay eggs) didn’t win as much as expected on the National. Okay, out with the hankies

IT has to be one of the most amazing statistics in the history of racing! In the Grand National at Aintree on Saturday there were 15 finishers, 14 of them ridden by Irish jockeys.

For the record the pilots were Timmy Murphy, Paul Carberry, David Casey, Barry Geraghty, Denis O’Regan, Jason Maguire, Robert Power, Paddy Flood, Davy Russell, Aidan Coleman, Tom Doyle, Ruby Walsh, Brian Harding and Tom Malone. The lone outsider, in his own country, was amateur, Nick Scholfield.

It made one smile when thinking back to the farce the starter, Peter Haynes, made of the race a year earlier when one of the excuses he gave for the total balls-up was the presence of Irish jockeys.