Grand National Weights Explained: How the Handicap Is Set
Grand National weights explained: how the BHA handicapper turns ratings into weights for the UK's biggest jumps race, what out of the handicap means and who gets in.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Grand National22 min read
- Run as a handicap since
- 1843
- Minimum age
- 7
- Minimum rating since 2024
- 130
- Maximum field since 2024
- 34
Every February, about eight weeks before the race, the British Horseracing Authority publishes a list. On it are the horses entered for the Grand National at Aintree, each with a figure in stones and pounds beside its name. That figure is the weight the horse will carry over four and a quarter miles and thirty fences, and it is the most argued-over number in British jump racing.
The weights are set by the BHA's handicapper according to each horse's official rating. The highest-rated horse is given the maximum weight the race allows; every other horse carries less, roughly one pound less for each point by which its rating falls short of the top horse's. For the 2025 running the top weight was 11st 12lb, and the floor sat at ten stone, the minimum that has applied through most of the modern race. A horse whose rating would put it below that floor still carries ten stone and is said to be out of the handicap. Once published, the weights do not rise for wins in other races, but they can go up across the board if the top weight is withdrawn. The rest of this page explains each of those steps, and the qualifying rules that decide whether a horse gets a weight at all.
The handicap in one paragraph, and who frames it
A handicap is a race in which the weights are adjusted so that, in theory, every horse has an equal chance. The better horse carries more. The weaker horse carries less. If the handicapper's sums were perfect, the whole field would cross the line together.
They never are, which is what makes a handicap worth watching. The British Horseracing Authority employs a team of handicappers, each responsible for a category of horses, who assign every horse that has run enough times in Britain an official rating. The rating is a number on a scale measured in pounds. A horse rated 150 is, in the handicapper's judgement, ten pounds better than one rated 140. For most handicaps the weights follow mechanically from the ratings; for the National, by long tradition, the senior jumps handicapper frames the weights personally and has some discretion. The general mechanics of British handicapping, including how ratings move after a run, are set out in our guide to how handicaps work in British racing.
The National has been a handicap since 1843. Before that, in its first runnings from 1839, the weights were fixed by the race conditions and not by anybody's assessment of the individual horses.
| Element | How it worked for the 2025 running |
|---|---|
| Who sets the weights | The BHA's handicapping team |
| What the weights are based on | Each horse's official steeplechase rating |
| When they are published | February, several weeks before the April race |
| Top weight | 11st 12lb |
| Minimum weight | 10st |
| Penalties for later wins | None in recent runnings |
- 7Minimum age of horse
- 130Minimum official rating
- 34Maximum field
- 26Pounds between top and bottom weight
As they applied for the 2025 running, from the race conditions and the BHA's published changes. Check the conditions for any other year.
From rating to weight, worked through with invented horses
The arithmetic is easier to see with an example. The horses below do not exist; the ratings are chosen to show how the system behaves at the top, in the middle and at the foot of the list. The limits are the 2025 figures of 11st 12lb at the top and ten stone at the floor.
Start with the highest-rated horse. Call it Harbour Light, rated 162. It gets the maximum, 11st 12lb, which is 166 pounds. Every other weight is calculated from that figure.
Copper Kettle is rated 150, twelve points below Harbour Light. It carries twelve pounds less: 11st 0lb. Mill Lane is rated 140, twenty-two points below, so it carries 10st 4lb. Long Acre is rated 136, twenty-six points below the top, which takes it to exactly 10st 0lb, the minimum.
Now Fen Drover, rated 132. Thirty points below the top horse, its mark would entitle it to 9st 10lb. But the race does not allow a weight under ten stone. Fen Drover must carry 10st 0lb anyway, four pounds more than its rating warrants. It is four pounds out of the handicap.
| Invented horse | Official rating | Points below top | Weight from rating | Weight carried |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harbour Light | 162 | 0 | 11st 12lb | 11st 12lb |
| Copper Kettle | 150 | 12 | 11st 0lb | 11st 0lb |
| Mill Lane | 140 | 22 | 10st 4lb | 10st 4lb |
| Long Acre | 136 | 26 | 10st 0lb | 10st 0lb |
| Fen Drover | 132 | 30 | 9st 10lb | 10st 0lb, 4lb out of the handicap |
The example also shows why the spread between maximum and minimum matters. With a top of 11st 12lb and a floor of ten stone there is a range of 26 pounds. Any horse rated more than 26 points below the top horse cannot be given its true weight. In a year when an exceptional horse is entered, rated far above the rest, a large part of the field ends up squashed against the floor, all carrying ten stone regardless of their differing ratings.
What a pound is worth
Racing people convert pounds into lengths. Over the sort of distances jumpers race, a pound is commonly reckoned to be worth about a length, and over four and a quarter miles probably more. On that rough reckoning Harbour Light is being asked to give Mill Lane a start of twenty-odd lengths. Whether it can is the question the race answers.
The National's own handicap and the compression of the top
For most British handicaps the published weights follow automatically from the ratings. The National has long been treated differently. By convention the BHA's senior jumps handicapper frames the National weights personally, and is allowed to depart from the official marks where judgement suggests the ratings alone would not produce a fair race over these fences and this distance.
That freedom was used most visibly in the late 2000s and the 2010s, when Phil Smith, then the BHA's head of handicapping, compressed the top of the National handicap. Horses near the head of the list were given lower weights than their ratings strictly warranted. The aim was partly to reflect the view that the very best horses were less advantaged over the Aintree fences than their ratings implied, and partly to make the race attractive to higher-class horses that would otherwise have been asked to carry punishing weights. Horses with good form over the National fences could also be given more weight than their mark, an adjustment sometimes called the Aintree factor.
The approach had critics. Compressing the top meant, by definition, that horses lower down were treated less generously in relative terms. Supporters argued that it attracted better fields and made the race more competitive; critics argued that the race should be framed on official ratings like any other handicap. Both were making reasonable points about a judgement call.
Is the discretion still used?
Since Smith's retirement his successors have generally framed the National closer to the official ratings, leaning on the marks horses have earned elsewhere. The discretion has not been abolished; it has simply been used sparingly. Whether any adjustment has been made in a given year is something the BHA states when the weights are published, and any reader checking a particular year should look for that statement rather than assume either answer.
The practical effect is that the National's weights now look much more like the ratings than they did a decade and a half ago. A horse rated twelve points higher than a rival will usually carry twelve pounds more.
What out of the handicap means, and how a rise in the weights changes it
Fen Drover, the invented horse in the example above, was four pounds out of the handicap. That phrase describes a horse whose rating would put it below the race's minimum weight. The horse has to carry the minimum regardless, so it is effectively running off a higher rating than its own. Four pounds out of the handicap means four pounds worse off than the handicapper believes is fair.
The phrase "long handicap" describes the same thing from another angle. The long handicap is the list of weights the horses would carry if there were no floor, and racing newspapers sometimes print it alongside the actual weights so readers can see how far out of the handicap each bottom-weight horse is.
When the top weight comes out
The weights can rise. If the horse allotted the top weight is withdrawn before the declaration stage, the handicap is effectively missing its anchor. Under British rules the weights are then raised, so that the highest-rated horse still standing carries the maximum. Every other weight rises by the same amount.
Go back to the invented horses. Suppose Harbour Light is withdrawn, leaving Copper Kettle, rated 150, as the highest-rated horse. Copper Kettle moves up to 11st 12lb, twelve pounds more than before. So does everybody else. Mill Lane moves from 10st 4lb to 11st 2lb. Long Acre moves from ten stone to 10st 12lb. Fen Drover's weight from its rating would now be 10st 8lb, above the floor, so it is no longer out of the handicap and is now running off its true mark.
This is why connections of horses near the foot of the list follow the fate of the top weight closely. A withdrawal at the top can bring a horse back into the handicap and improve its position relative to the field at a stroke.
In practice, with big National entries, the top of the handicap is usually more crowded than in the example, and the withdrawal of one top weight may raise the list by only a pound or two because another horse is rated nearly as high.
Why the weights are fixed weeks ahead, and what a winner in March does to them
The weights are published in February. The race is in April. Between the two, many entries run again, some of them in big races at the Cheltenham Festival in March. Some win.
In an ordinary British handicap, a horse that wins after the weights are published often picks up a penalty, a fixed amount of extra weight written into the race conditions to stop a horse that has just shown improved form from running off a rating that is now out of date. The National has carried no such penalty in recent runnings. Whatever a horse does after the February publication, its National weight stays where it was set, subject only to the rise across the board described above if the top weight is taken out.
That creates a well-known quirk. A horse that improves sharply between February and April, winning a valuable race at Cheltenham or elsewhere, runs at Aintree off a weight that reflects its earlier, lower rating. Its new rating may be several pounds higher, but the National ignores it. The horse is, in effect, well treated.
Why not update the weights?
The reason is administrative as much as philosophical. Publishing weights eight weeks ahead allows owners and trainers to plan, allows the entry to be whittled down through the scratching stages with everyone knowing where they stand, and gives the race its long build-up. Updating the weights every time a horse ran would make the February publication meaningless. The cost is that a few horses arrive at Aintree better handicapped than they would be if the weights were framed in April, and the handicapper accepts that as the price of a stable list.
Some observers argue that a penalty would make the race fairer. Others argue that the quirk is part of the race's character, and that the handicapper allows for likely improvement when framing the weights in the first place. Both views are held by serious people inside racing.
What the weight physically is: rider, saddle, lead and the scales
The weight a horse carries is not a lump of lead. It is the total of everything on its back: the jockey's body, clothing and boots, the saddle and the weight cloth, plus any lead needed to make up the difference. A few items, the skull cap among them, are left out of the reckoning under the Rules of Racing.
Weighing out
Before the race, each rider sits on the scales in the weighing room in front of the Clerk of the Scales, holding the saddle and equipment. The total has to match the allotted weight. If it falls short, thin flat lead weights are slipped into pockets in the weight cloth under the saddle until it is right.
For riders near the top of the National handicap that is usually straightforward. For riders of horses near the foot, it is harder. Ten stone is the usual floor in British jump handicaps, not something peculiar to the National, and many professional jump jockeys find it a difficult weight to make. Booking a rider for a bottom-weight horse is partly about who can do the weight without wasting to the point of weakness. Our guide to how much jockeys weigh covers the minimum riding weights and the effect of wasting in more detail.
Overweight
A rider who cannot make the allotted weight can ride at a pound or two over it. The difference is called overweight and is declared before the race. The horse then carries more than the handicapper intended. In a race as long as the National, a few pounds of overweight is a real handicap of its own.
Allowances
In many British races a conditional jockey or an amateur can claim an allowance, a reduction in weight to compensate for inexperience. Whether a claim can be taken is set by each race's conditions, and valuable handicaps such as the National have commonly excluded them, in which case a young rider carries the full allotted weight.
Weighing in
After the race the rider weighs in again with the same equipment. A small tolerance allows for the weight lost through sweat over nine minutes or so of hard riding. Beyond that tolerance, a rider who weighs in light gets the horse disqualified. The result is not official until "weighed in" is announced.
Getting into the race: age, rating and chasing experience
Not every horse is eligible to be given a weight. The race conditions, set by Aintree and approved by the BHA, carry a series of qualifications that a horse must meet to be entered at all. They have been tightened several times since 2011.
Age
A horse must be at least seven years old. The minimum was raised from six to seven for the 2012 race, following the BHA's review after the 2011 running. The reasoning was that younger horses were less likely to have the experience of big fences and long trips the race demands.
Rating
A horse must have an official rating of at least 130. The minimum rating has been raised in stages over the past fifteen years, most recently from 125 to 130 for the 2024 race, as part of a package of changes that also cut the maximum field to 34 and introduced a standing start. A higher minimum means fewer horses at the bottom of the ratings, and so a narrower range of ability in the field.
Chasing experience
A horse must also have shown it can complete in steeplechases. The conditions require a record of finishing, and of finishing in the first places, in steeplechases over long distances, and they give a review panel the power to look at the jumping record of a doubtful entry and refuse it. The exact form of words has changed over the years and the race conditions for the year in question are the place to check it.
The riders
The rider has to qualify too. The conditions require a jockey to have ridden a minimum number of winners over jumps, with a proportion of them in steeplechases, and the threshold is written into each year's conditions rather than fixed in the Rules of Racing. It applies to professionals and amateurs alike.
| Requirement | As it stood for the 2025 race | When it was last tightened |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum age | Seven | For the 2012 race |
| Minimum official rating | 130 | For the 2024 race, from 125 |
| Chasing record | Completion and placings in long steeplechases | Revised more than once since 2011 |
| Review of jumping record | Panel may refuse doubtful entries | Applied in recent runnings |
| Rider experience | A minimum number of jumps winners, some in chases | Set in each year's race conditions |
From entry to the final field: scratchings, confirmation and elimination
The National starts with a long list and ends with a short one. The process takes about three months and runs through a series of stages, each of which costs owners a fee and gives them a chance to withdraw.
- Entries closeOwners enter horses that meet the age, rating and experience requirements, usually in late January or early February
- Weights publishedThe BHA handicapper publishes the weights for every entry in February
- Scratching stagesOwners withdraw horses at set dates through March; each further stage carries a further fee
- ConfirmationHorses still in are confirmed about a week before the race, and the shape of the field becomes clear
- Final declarationsTwo days before the race, owners declare which horses will run and which jockeys will ride
- Elimination and reservesIf more horses are declared than the safety limit allows, the lowest-rated are eliminated, and a few may stand as reserves
The sequence as it has run in recent years. Dates and fees are set in each year's race conditions.
Elimination from the foot of the weights
The race has a safety limit on the number of runners: 34 since 2024, cut from 40. If more horses stand their ground at final declarations than the limit allows, the excess is eliminated from the bottom of the weights. The highest-rated horses get in; the lowest-rated miss out.
This is where out of the handicap meets elimination. A horse well out of the handicap is near the bottom of the ratings, and in a year of strong demand it may not get a run at all. The size of the field, and the reasoning behind the cut to 34, is the subject of our page on how many horses run in the Grand National.
Why owners still enter horses that probably will not get in
Some owners enter horses near the bottom of the ratings in the knowledge that they will probably be eliminated, because withdrawals happen right up to the final stage. Injury, bad ground and other targets take horses out every year. A horse that is twelfth reserve in March can be a runner by April.
Reserves: how a horse just outside the cut can still run
The cut at final declarations is not always final. The race has operated a reserve system in many recent years, under which a small number of horses just outside the safety limit are named as reserves. If a declared runner is withdrawn before a fixed deadline, usually on the day before the race, the first reserve takes its place.
The reserve runs off its own weight. Because the weights were published in February, a reserve does not carry a different weight for having come in late; it simply carries the weight the handicapper gave it, unless the top weight has been withdrawn and the list has risen.
A system that keeps changing
The reserve arrangement has been altered several times. The number of reserves allowed, the deadline by which they can come in, and in some years whether the system operated at all have all varied. It has been dropped, restored and resized as the BHA and Aintree weighed the case for filling the field against the case for giving connections a clear picture of the runners well ahead of the race. A reader checking a particular year should look at that year's race conditions rather than assume the arrangement described here.
The logic for reserves is straightforward. Without them, a withdrawal late in the week leaves the field one short of the limit and a disappointed owner whose horse was next in line. With them, the field stays at the limit and the horse that just missed out gets its run. The logic against is the uncertainty they introduce for riders, who may not know until the day before whether they have a mount.
The record for weight carried to victory
Four horses have won the Grand National carrying twelve stone seven pounds, the heaviest winning weight in the race's history: Cloister in 1893, Manifesto in 1899, Jerry M in 1912 and Poethlyn in 1919. In the early decades of the handicap, twelve stone seven was the maximum, and these four were the top-weighted horses of their years. All four were exceptional chasers.
Since then the maximum has been lowered, so the record cannot be equalled.
| Year | Winner | Weight carried | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1893 | Cloister | 12st 7lb | First of the four winners at the old maximum |
| 1899 | Manifesto | 12st 7lb | His second National win |
| 1912 | Jerry M | 12st 7lb | Top weight of his year |
| 1919 | Poethlyn | 12st 7lb | The last horse to win carrying 12st 7lb |
| 1974 | Red Rum | 12st | The second of his three wins |
| 1977 | Red Rum | 11st 8lb | His third win |
| 2012 | Neptune Collonges | 11st 6lb | Won by a nose |
| 2015 | Many Clouds | 11st 9lb | The heaviest winning weight since Red Rum |
Red Rum's three weights
Red Rum's three wins illustrate the handicap at work. In 1973 he carried 10st 5lb and caught Crisp, carrying the top weight of twelve stone, in the final strides. A year later, his rating raised by his win, he carried twelve stone himself and won again. In 1977, at the age of twelve, he won a third time carrying 11st 8lb. The full record is on our page on Red Rum's Grand National wins.
The modern winners near the top of the weights are fewer and more celebrated for it. Many Clouds' 11st 9lb in 2015 was the heaviest winning weight since Red Rum's day, and Neptune Collonges carried 11st 6lb when he won by a nose in 2012. Those are facts about the history of the race. They are not a guide to whether a horse near the top of any future list will win, and this page draws no such conclusion from them.
Why old and new weights do not compare
Twelve stone seven pounds in 1919 and twelve stone in 1974 do not mean the same thing as 11st 12lb today, for two reasons.
The range has narrowed
The top weight has come down over the race's history, from 12st 7lb in the Victorian and Edwardian eras to twelve stone by the 1970s and below twelve stone since. The floor, meanwhile, has stood at ten stone through the modern era, and the published histories put it lower in the race's early decades. A narrower range means the gap between the best horse and the worst horse in the field is compressed. In 1919, a horse at the top might be giving the bottom weight two stone or more. In 2025 the maximum spread was 26 pounds, less than two stone.
What that does to a weight-carrying record
A record of carrying twelve stone seven to victory reflects both the horse's ability and the size of the range it was competing within. A top weight in a narrower range is carrying less, absolutely and relatively, than a top weight in a wider one. Many Clouds at 11st 9lb was carrying more than most modern horses, but less than Red Rum's twelve stone and much less than Poethlyn's twelve stone seven. Whether he was carrying more in relation to the field is a different question, and one that only careful study of each year's ratings could answer.
So a weight-carrying record is a fact about a horse in its own era. Comparing across eras says more about how the handicap's limits have changed than about which horse carried the heaviest burden in any meaningful sense. The broader set of records the race has produced, from the fastest time to the most wins, is collected on our page of Grand National records.
How the handicap came about, and what has changed since
The race usually counted as the first Grand National, won by Lottery in 1839, was not a handicap. The runners carried weights fixed by the conditions of the race, not adjusted for each horse's ability. The best horse in the field had the same task as the worst.
In 1843 Edward Topham, a handicapper of considerable reputation whose family would run Aintree for generations, turned the race into a handicap. His reasoning was commercial as much as sporting. A race in which the weights gave every horse a chance attracted a bigger field and wider interest than one the best horse could win by turning up. The name Grand National came a few years later.
The handicap has been the race's defining feature ever since. What has changed is the range within which it operates.
| Period | Change to the weights |
|---|---|
| 1839 to 1842 | Weights fixed by the race conditions, not by individual assessment |
| 1843 | The race becomes a handicap |
| Victorian and Edwardian eras | Top weight of 12st 7lb, carried to victory four times between 1893 and 1919 |
| By the 1970s | Top weight of twelve stone |
| Later decades | Top weight brought below twelve stone; the top of the handicap compressed for several years in the 2010s |
| 2024 | Minimum rating raised to 130 and the field cut to 34 |
The effect of the changes
Each change to the limits has a purpose. Lowering the top weight makes the race more attractive to good horses that would otherwise be asked to carry a crushing burden. Raising the minimum rating, and keeping the floor at ten stone, means the bottom of the field is of a higher standard than it was. Cutting the field size reduces the number of runners at the bottom of the weights who get a run. The net effect is a race in which the weights are more compressed and the field is of a more even standard than at any time in its history.
That is a different race from the one Cloister and Poethlyn won. It is still a handicap, still framed by an official in February and still argued over until April, and the essentials of how it works were laid down in 1843. How the handicap fits with the start, the fences and the run-in is set out in our explainer on how the Grand National works, and the rest of our guides to British sport start from the England hub.