Inothewayurthinkin, the six-length winner of Friday’s Cheltenham Gold Cup, will not attempt to become the second horse to win the Gold Cup and Aintree Grand National in the same season. He has been taken out of next month’s race at the latest forfeit stage.
Inothewayurthinkin was handicapped for the Grand National on the basis of his form before his defeat of Galopin Des Champs, the Gold Cup winner in 2023 and 2024, and would have been around a stone “well in” at the weights had he lined up for the world’s most famous steeplechase on April 5th.
As a result, he had been cut to around 3-1 favourite to emulate Golden Miller, who completed the Gold Cup/Grand National double in 1934.
However, his trainer Gavin Cromwell, said on Tuesday that while the seven-year-old had come out of last week’s race well, it had been decided after consultation with owner JP McManus that a trip to Liverpool could prove a step too far for the gelding at this relatively early stage of his career.
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“He’s only a seven-year-old and we’ve worked hard on his jumping this season, and his jumping has improved an awful lot,” Cromwell said. “We think it’s the right thing to do. It’s all about doing the right thing for the horse. Punchestown [in late April] is an option, but it’s certainly not for definite. He’s come out of the race [at Cheltenham] well.”
There were no fallers in last year’s Aintree Grand National, the first to be staged with a maximum field of 34 and after further modifications to the course and conditions to make the race less demanding. However, McManus’s decision to bypass the race may have been influenced in part by the memory of his first Gold Cup winner, Synchronised, sustaining a fatal injury while running loose after falling in the 2012 Grand National a few weeks later.
An attempt to pull off one of the rarest feats in steeplechasing would have been a huge talking point in the run-up to next month’s race, but in the absence of Inothewayurthinkin, punters can at least look forward to having a typically competitive field to assess. Intense Raffles, last season’s Irish Grand National winner, emerged as a narrow favourite at around 7-1 after 67 horses were left in the race.
McManus is likely to be represented by Iroko (8-1) and last year’s Aintree hero, I Am Maximus (10-1), who will attempt to become the first horse since Red Rum, in 1974, to win the Grand National under topweight. – Guardian
