No blame attached to National deaths

The British Horseracing Authority’s review of the 2012 Grand National found the circumstances which led to the deaths of Synchronised and According To Pete could have been neither “foreseen nor prevented”.

The report confirmed that Synchronised, who unshipped Tony McCoy on the way to the start, was given a full veterinary examination before he was allowed to line up, and had a heartbeat that registered “barely above a normal resting rate”.

But having fallen at Becher’s Brook on the first circuit he ran riderless until falling again at the 11th fence, where it appeared he fractured his right-hind tibia and fibula.