Grand National Records: Most Wins, Fastest Time, Firsts
Grand National records at Aintree as they stood after 2025: most wins by horse, jockey and trainer, the fastest time, the oldest winner and the UK firsts.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Grand National22 min read
- Most wins by a horse
- 3, Red Rum
- Most wins by a jockey
- 5, George Stevens
- Fastest time, 1990
- 8 min 47.8 sec
- First running at Aintree
- 1839
Red Rum's three wins, George Stevens's five rides to victory and Mr Frisk's 8 minutes 47.8 seconds are the three numbers people most often look up. As they stood after the 2025 running, nobody had matched Red Rum, nobody had matched Stevens since the 1870s, and Mr Frisk's time from 1990 was still the fastest. The trainers' record of four winners was shared three ways, by George Dockeray, Fred Rimell and Ginger McCain. The oldest winner was Peter Simple, fifteen in 1853. The closest finish was the nose by which Neptune Collonges beat Sunnyhillboy in 2012.
Every one of those records belongs to the Grand National at Aintree, run on the edge of Liverpool since 1839 and owned since 1983 by the Jockey Club. Every one of them also moves. Records are stated here as at the end of the 2025 race, and the roll of honour grows each April.
The Grand National records table, as it stood after the 2025 running
| Record | Holder | Figure | Year or years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Most wins by a horse | Red Rum | 3 | 1973, 1974, 1977 |
| Most wins by a jockey | George Stevens | 5 | 1856 to 1870 |
| Most wins by a trainer | George Dockeray, Fred Rimell and Ginger McCain | 4 each | 1839 to 1852; 1956 to 1976; 1973 to 2004 |
| Fastest time | Mr Frisk | 8 min 47.8 sec | 1990 |
| Oldest winner | Peter Simple | 15 years | 1853 |
| Youngest winners | Five-year-olds, the last of them Lutteur III | 5 years | 1909 |
| Closest finish | Neptune Collonges over Sunnyhillboy | A nose | 2012 |
| Oldest winning rider | Dick Saunders on Grittar | 48 years | 1982 |
| Youngest winning rider | Bruce Hobbs on Battleship | 17 years | 1938 |
A record table compresses a lot. Some of these figures were set on a course that has since been changed beyond recognition, and the last section of this page comes back to that. The trainers' row needs a gloss as well: McCain's four were three for one horse, Rimell's were four different horses, and Dockeray's belong to the race's first fourteen years, when what a trainer did and who got the credit for it were recorded far more loosely than they are now.
- 3Red Rum's wins
- 5George Stevens's winning rides
- 4Winners for Dockeray, Rimell or McCain
- 15Peter Simple's age in 1853
As they stood after the 2025 running. Each can be equalled or broken in a future race.
Horses who won more than once, and why so few have
Before Red Rum there were the dual winners. The roll of honour lists them across a century and a half.
| Horse | Wins | Consecutive? |
|---|---|---|
| Peter Simple | 1849, 1853 | No |
| Abd-El-Kader | 1850, 1851 | Yes |
| The Lamb | 1868, 1871 | No |
| The Colonel | 1869, 1870 | Yes |
| Manifesto | 1897, 1899 | No |
| Reynoldstown | 1935, 1936 | Yes |
| Red Rum | 1973, 1974, 1977 | First two |
| Tiger Roll | 2018, 2019 | Yes |
Poethlyn is often added to that list, having won the substitute race at Gatwick in 1918 and then the real thing at Aintree in 1919. Whether the Gatwick race counts depends on whose record you read. Most modern lists treat the wartime substitutes as separate races.
Why winning twice is so hard
The weights explain most of it. The National is a handicap, and a winner is reassessed and given more to carry the following year. The handicapper is trying to stop the same horse winning again, and generally succeeds. The extra burden pushes a horse up from a middling weight towards the top, where only the very best have ever won.
Age adds to it. A horse that wins at nine is ten the next year, and the race is long enough that a small loss of speed or stamina costs a great deal. Then there is luck. Thirty fences and a big field can end any horse's race regardless of its ability. To win twice a horse has to be well handicapped, still at its peak and avoid trouble, two years running. Tiger Roll did it under an increased weight in 2019, which is why his second win was rated so highly.
Red Rum's three, and how he got them, are on our page about his Aintree record. It is enough here to say that his record has stood for nearly half a century and that only Tiger Roll has come close.
The jockeys: George Stevens and the riders who followed
Five wins in fifteen years. George Stevens won on Freetrader in 1856, Emblem in 1863, Emblematic in 1864 and The Colonel in 1869 and 1870. No rider has won more than three since.
Brian Fletcher is the modern name on the list. He won on Red Alligator in 1968 and on Red Rum in 1973 and 1974. Since then the best has been two, a mark shared by Richard Dunwoody (West Tip in 1986 and Miinnehoma in 1994), Carl Llewellyn (Party Politics in 1992 and Earth Summit in 1998), Ruby Walsh (Papillon in 2000 and Hedgehunter in 2005), Leighton Aspell (Pineau de Re in 2014 and Many Clouds in 2015) and Davy Russell, on Tiger Roll in both his years.
Champions who had to wait, and those who never won
Sir Anthony McCoy was champion jump jockey in Britain twenty times and won the National once, on Don't Push It in 2010, at his fifteenth attempt. The race had been the one big prize missing from his record, and the reception when he won reflected that.
Several champions never won it at all. John Francome, Peter Scudamore and Richard Johnson all retired without a National, and Johnson in particular rode in it many times and was placed. That list says something about the race. A jockey can be the best in the country and still never have the right horse on the right day at Aintree. Riding skill matters less here than in almost any other big race, and luck matters more.
The nineteenth-century riders
Tom Olliver's three wins spanned eleven years: Gay Lad in 1842, Vanguard in 1843 and Peter Simple in 1853. He was a professional in an age when many of the best riders over fences were gentlemen amateurs, and much of what is known about him comes from the sporting press of the day rather than from any official record, which in the 1840s barely existed. Tommy Pickernell won on Anatis in 1860, The Lamb in 1871 and Pathfinder in 1875, riding for years under the name "Mr Thomas", a convention among gentleman riders who preferred their families not to find them in the racing columns.
Arthur Nightingall, who rode out of Epsom, won on Ilex in 1890, Why Not in 1894 and Grudon in 1901, the last of those ridden out through a snowstorm. Jack Anthony's three, on Glenside in 1911, Ally Sloper in 1915 and Troytown in 1920, span the First World War: the 1915 race was the last at Aintree before the course was requisitioned, and 1920 was the second running after it came back.
These were different races. Fences were still close to natural obstacles in the early years, the course itself was being reshaped, and a jockey who parted company with his horse could catch it and carry on. Five wins in that world and five wins now are not the same achievement. Nobody has come close to five in the modern race either, and Stevens's total looks safer than any other figure on this page.
Fred Winter is the outlier in the other direction. He won as a jockey on Sundew in 1957 and Kilmore in 1962, then as a trainer with Jay Trump in 1965 and Anglo in 1966.
Trainers and owners: the four-winner record and the Irish run
Fred Rimell won with ESB in 1956, Nicolaus Silver in 1961, Gay Trip in 1970 and Rag Trade in 1976. Ginger McCain won with Red Rum three times and then, twenty-seven years after the last of those, with Amberleigh House in 2004. Four each, and the record was still shared at the end of the 2025 running, because the first man to reach four got there before either of them was born. George Dockeray trained Lottery, the 1839 winner, and then Jerry in 1840, Gay Lad in 1842 and Miss Mowbray in 1852, from a yard at Epsom. Records from that period are thinner than anything after it, and Dockeray's four come with that caveat attached rather than any doubt about the results themselves.
Vincent O'Brien did something different again. He trained three winners in a row with three different horses: Early Mist in 1953, Royal Tan in 1954 and Quare Times in 1955. Nobody has done that since. Gordon Elliott's three came with Silver Birch in 2007 and Tiger Roll twice. Willie Mullins won with Hedgehunter in 2005, I Am Maximus in 2024 and Nick Rockett in 2025, ridden by his son Patrick as an amateur.
The owners
Among modern owners the mark is three. Noel Le Mare got there first, with Red Rum's wins of 1973, 1974 and 1977, which makes him the only owner to have taken the race three times with one horse. J.P. McManus won with Don't Push It in 2010, Minella Times in 2021 and I Am Maximus in 2024. Michael O'Leary's Gigginstown House Stud won with Rule The World in 2016 and Tiger Roll in 2018 and 2019. The nineteenth-century records for owners are harder to pin down from the sources and are left out here rather than guessed.
The weight of Irish stables
Look at the winners since the turn of the century and the Irish presence is obvious. Of the seven runnings from 2018 to 2025 (none was held in 2020), six went to horses trained in Ireland. Corach Rambler, trained in Scotland by Lucinda Russell, was the exception in 2023. The reasons are argued over: the depth of the Irish jumps programme, the number of big owners based there, and the way the handicap treats Irish form. What is not in doubt is the result.
It was not always like this. After L'Escargot in 1975 the race went to British stables every year until Bobbyjo, trained by Tommy Carberry and ridden by his son Paul, won in 1999. Carberry had ridden L'Escargot, so the gap opened and closed with the same family. Twenty-four years without an Irish winner now looks like an anomaly, and the 1950s, when Vincent O'Brien won three in a row, look more like the normal state of affairs. The balance has swung before and could swing again; a record of who trains the winners is a record of where the best staying chasers happen to be stabled, and that has never stayed put for long.
The fastest time and the narrowest margins
Mr Frisk's 8 minutes 47.8 seconds in 1990 was set on fast ground over the longer course then in use, with Marcus Armytage riding as an amateur. It took the record from Red Rum's 9 minutes 1.9 seconds in 1973, and it still stood after the 2025 running.
That record is unlikely to fall soon. The start was moved in 2013, which shortened the course, and the course was remeasured a few years after that. A faster time over a shorter distance would not mean a faster horse. And Aintree now waters the course to avoid fast ground, which is safer but slower. The details of how the distance has changed are in our guide to how long the National is.
The nose of 2012
Neptune Collonges and Sunnyhillboy came to the line together in 2012 and the judge needed the photograph. Neptune Collonges, trained by Paul Nicholls and ridden by Daryl Jacob, won by a nose. It is the narrowest margin in the race's history and the closest anyone can come to a dead heat without having one.
Winners who came home alone
At the other end, some winners have finished so far clear that the margin was recorded as a distance, which in the old form books meant too far to measure sensibly. Tipperary Tim in 1928 had only one other horse to beat, and that one had been remounted. In the modern era Red Rum's third win, in 1977, came by twenty-five lengths from Churchtown Boy.
Age records: the oldest, the youngest and the riders
Peter Simple was fifteen when he won in 1853. He had won before, in 1849, and he was ridden on the second occasion by Tom Olliver. No horse of that age is likely to win again. The minimum age is now seven, and most winners are between eight and eleven.
At the other end are the five-year-olds who won in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lutteur III in 1909 was the last of them. The minimum age was raised in later years and has been seven since the 2012 race, so the five-year-old record cannot be equalled.
The riders
Dick Saunders was forty-eight when he won on Grittar in 1982, riding as an amateur. He retired immediately afterwards. Bruce Hobbs was seventeen when he won on Battleship in 1938, trained by his father Reg. Neither record looks likely to be broken. Jockeys need a set number of wins under the race conditions before they can ride, which makes a seventeen-year-old winner harder, and forty-eight is old for any jumps jockey, let alone one at Aintree.
The heaviest burdens carried to victory
Twelve stone seven pounds. That was the weight carried to victory by Cloister in 1893, Manifesto in 1899, Jerry M in 1912 and Poethlyn in 1919, and it is the highest burden any winner has shouldered. No horse can match it now. The handicap has been compressed so far that the top weight for the 2025 race was 11st 12lb, nine pounds below what those four carried.
Red Rum's twelve stone in 1974 is the heaviest winning weight of the modern era, and it came a year after Crisp had carried the same twelve stone and been caught on the run-in by him. The two performances together are a lesson in what weight does over more than four miles. Crisp, with a huge lead, could not hold off a horse receiving twenty-three pounds. Red Rum, carrying the twelve stone himself a year later, won by seven lengths. He was a better horse in 1974 than in 1973, and the handicapper had said so.
Top weights since Red Rum
Between Red Rum in 1974 and Many Clouds in 2015 no horse won the National carrying top weight. Many Clouds had won the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury earlier that season and carried 11st 9lb at Aintree. His win was held up at the time as evidence that the compressed weights had made the race fairer to the best horses, and that is a reasonable reading. A race in which the top weight never wins is a lottery. A race in which it can, now and then, is a handicap doing its job.
The twelve-stone-seven winners are a closed list. Their record could only be equalled if the weights were widened again, and the movement for decades has been the other way.
Mares, greys, small horses and a transatlantic double
Thirteen mares have won the National by the standard count, the last of them Nickel Coin in 1951. Mares are now rarely entered. Most jump racing in Britain and Ireland is with geldings, and mares that show talent are often retired to breed.
Three greys have won: The Lamb, twice, in 1868 and 1871; Nicolaus Silver in 1961; and Neptune Collonges in 2012. Grey is a colour that tends to be over-represented in folklore and under-represented in racing, which is why each of these is remembered. The Lamb was lightly made as well as grey, small enough that contemporaries wrote about his size, and his two wins came three years apart.
The smallest and the one that won both Nationals
Battleship was small for a steeplechaser, standing about 15.2 hands, and he is regularly described as one of the smallest horses ever to win. He was an American horse, a son of Man o' War, owned by Marion duPont Scott, and he had won the American Grand National in 1934. When he won at Aintree in 1938 he became the only horse to have won both races.
The Gold Cup and the National in one season
Golden Miller won the Cheltenham Gold Cup five times in a row from 1932 to 1936, and in 1934 he won the National as well, in a record time for the race. He is still the only horse to have won both in the same season. L'Escargot managed the pair in different years: the Gold Cup in 1970 and 1971, then the National in 1975, beating Red Rum. The two races ask different things. The Gold Cup is run at level weights over about three and a quarter miles on a course of tight turns and undulations; the National is a handicap over more than four miles on a wide, flat track with fences unlike any at Cheltenham.
Women in the Grand National: four firsts
For more than a century the National was ridden only by men. Women were first licensed to ride against professional men over jumps in Britain in the mid-1970s, and the first woman reached the National start within a couple of seasons.
| First | Who | Horse | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Woman to ride in the race | Charlotte Brew | Barony Fort | 1977 |
| Woman to complete the course | Geraldine Rees | Cheers | 1982 |
| Woman to train the winner | Jenny Pitman | Corbiere | 1983 |
| Woman to ride the winner | Rachael Blackmore | Minella Times | 2021 |
Charlotte Brew's horse refused late in the race. Geraldine Rees got round on Cheers, the last of the finishers. Jenny Pitman's Corbiere won the following year, ridden by Ben de Haan, and she trained Royal Athlete to win in 1995 as well. Her place in the record is larger than one line in a table suggests, because she also trained Esha Ness, first past the post in the void race of 1993, a near-miss that would have given her three. Venetia Williams, with Mon Mome in 2009, and Lucinda Russell, with One For Arthur in 2017 and Corach Rambler in 2023, have since trained winners too.
Rachael Blackmore's win in 2021 was the one that made the front pages. Minella Times was trained by Henry de Bromhead and owned by J.P. McManus. Before her, the best placing by a woman rider had been Katie Walsh's third on Seabass in 2012. Blackmore had already been leading rider at the Cheltenham Festival that year, and her National win came less than a month later.
The first Nationals and how the race got its name
William Lynn ran the Waterloo Hotel in Liverpool. In the 1820s he leased land at Aintree from Lord Sefton and built a grandstand, and in the 1830s he began staging steeplechases there. The races of 1836, 1837 and 1838 are sometimes counted as the first Nationals. Whether they were run at Aintree or at Maghull, a few miles away, is disputed, and the official roll of honour generally begins in 1839.
That year's winner was Lottery, ridden by Jem Mason, over a course that has been reshaped many times since and is described as it now stands in our Aintree racecourse guide. The race was called the Grand Liverpool Steeplechase. Captain Martin Becher fell at a brook on the first circuit and, the story goes, sheltered in it while the field went by. The fence has carried his name ever since. Lottery's win was followed by a race that took several names over the next few years. In 1843 Edward Topham made it a handicap. By 1847 it was running as the Grand National.
Why the name stuck
The word "national" was a claim. Steeplechasing was mostly local in the 1830s, with races staged between neighbouring landowners. A race at Liverpool open to horses from across Britain and Ireland, with a big prize and a railway to bring the crowds, was something new. The name told everyone it was the race of the year, and it has been since.
Nationals that did not count, or did not happen
Not every year has a Grand National, and not every Grand National has a winner.
| Year | What happened | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1916 to 1918 | Aintree requisitioned; substitute races run at Gatwick | Vermouth, Ballymacad and Poethlyn won the substitutes |
| 1941 to 1945 | No race during the Second World War | None |
| 1993 | Two false starts; most of the field raced on | Declared void; Esha Ness first past the post |
| 1997 | Bomb warnings on the Saturday; course evacuated | Run on Monday 7 April; Lord Gyllene won |
| 2020 | Cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic | None |
The 1993 race is the strangest entry in the record. The starter's recall flag failed to unfurl at the second false start, most of the riders did not realise the race had been stopped, and seven horses completed the course. Esha Ness, trained by Jenny Pitman and ridden by John White, passed the post first in a race that never officially happened. The Jockey Club declared it void.
The 1997 race was postponed after coded IRA bomb warnings were received on the Saturday afternoon. The course was cleared, tens of thousands of racegoers were evacuated, and the race was run on the Monday in front of a smaller crowd. Lord Gyllene, ridden by Tony Dobbin, led almost from start to finish.
- 1916 to 1918Racing at Aintree is suspended during the First World War and substitute races are run at Gatwick.
- 1941 to 1945No race is run during the Second World War.
- 1993The race is declared void after a failed recall, with seven horses completing the course.
- 1997The race is postponed from Saturday to Monday after bomb warnings and run in front of a smaller crowd.
- 2020The race is cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The years in which no Aintree National was run, or a race was run without counting. Substitute races at Gatwick are not counted as Aintree Nationals by most lists.
Four finishes that became part of the language
Devon Loch, 1956
The Queen Mother's horse, ridden by Dick Francis, was well clear on the run-in. About fifty yards from the line, without any obvious cause, he spread his legs and collapsed on to his belly. ESB passed him and won. Nobody has ever explained it to everyone's satisfaction. A jump shadow, a cramp, the noise of the crowd: all have been suggested. Dick Francis went on to write thrillers set in racing.
Foinavon, 1967
At the twenty-third fence a loose horse ran across the front of the field and brought nearly every runner to a halt. Horses refused, fell, unseated their riders and blocked each other. Foinavon was so far behind that he missed the trouble, picked his way through and jumped the fence on his own. By the time the others had been remounted or turned round, he was too far ahead to catch. Ridden by John Buckingham, he won. The fence now carries his name.
Crisp, 1973
The Australian chaser Crisp led for most of the race under twelve stone, far ahead of the rest, and was caught in the last strides by Red Rum carrying twenty-three pounds less. It is still considered one of the finest losing performances in racing.
Aldaniti, 1981
Bob Champion had been treated for cancer. Aldaniti had been injured repeatedly. Together they won the 1981 National, trained by Josh Gifford, and the story became a film. It was a rare National in which nobody outside the losing connections minded who won.
Who owned Aintree, who nearly sold it, and who saved it
The Topham family ran Aintree for most of its history. Edward Topham turned the National into a handicap in 1843, and his descendants managed the course for more than a century. In 1949 Mirabel Topham bought the course outright from the Earl of Sefton. She built a motor racing circuit inside the racecourse, which held the British Grand Prix five times between 1955 and 1962 and whose history is covered in our guide to the Aintree motor racing circuit.
By the 1960s crowds were falling and the Tophams were looking for a buyer. In 1973 the course was sold to the property developer Bill Davies. He raised admission prices and the crowd fell further. From 1976 Ladbrokes managed the race under an agreement with Davies, and that kept it going into the early 1980s, but every spring brought doubt about whether there would be a race the following year. Accounts differ on exactly when their management ended; what is not disputed is that it ran out while Davies still owned the course.
- 1843Edward Topham makes the National a handicap, beginning his family's long association with the course.
- 1949Mirabel Topham buys the racecourse from the Earl of Sefton.
- 1973The Tophams sell the course to the developer Bill Davies.
- 1976Ladbrokes takes over management of the race under an agreement with Davies.
- 1983After a public appeal, the Jockey Club buys the course and secures the race's future.
The main changes of ownership and management that shaped the modern race.
In 1983 a public appeal raised money to buy the course, and the Jockey Club completed the purchase. The National has been staged by the Jockey Club since, with commercial sponsorship from the following year.
Why records either side of 1983 are not like for like
Records set before and after the Jockey Club took over were set on a course that kept changing. The fences were sloped in the early 1960s, Becher's was altered for 1990, the cores became plastic for 2013, the start moved the same year, and the field was cut for 2024. Mr Frisk's 1990 time was set over a longer course than today's. Red Rum's wins came over stiffer fences than any modern winner jumps. Comparing times or margins across those eras is like comparing a modern sprinter's time with one set on cinders. Each fence, with the date its construction changed, is listed in the guide to the sixteen National fences.
The field changed too. Red Rum won in an era before the forty-runner cap existed; Nick Rockett beat a field held to thirty-four by a limit introduced only the year before, for reasons set out on the page about how many horses run in the National. A win against forty and a win against thirty-two are both National wins, but they are not the same test.
So every record on this page carries a date, and every one is provisional. Mr Frisk's time has lasted more than three decades and may last several more on a watered course. Red Rum's three wins have lasted nearly fifty years. George Stevens's five have lasted more than a century and a half, and of all the numbers here that is the one most likely to outlive everyone reading it. Our other horse racing and sport guides for readers in England are gathered on the England hub.