How the Grand National Works: Start, Fences and the Run-In
A plain guide to how the Grand National works at Aintree: the handicap, the standing start, two circuits of thirty fences, the Elbow and who polices the race.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Grand National26 min read
- Type of race
- Handicap steeplechase
- Jumps in the race
- 30
- Run-in from the last fence
- 494 yards
- Maximum field since 2024
- 34
Thirty-four horses stand behind a strand of tape at Aintree, on the northern edge of Liverpool, on a Saturday in April. Each carries a different weight. Nine minutes or so later the ones still running pass a winning post a short walk from where they set off, having gone nearly twice round a course of sixteen spruce-dressed fences and left the ground thirty times. That is the Grand National in outline: a handicap steeplechase for horses aged seven and upwards, run left-handed over a longer trip than any other race in the British jumps calendar.
The figures behind that outline, as they stood for the 2025 running, are short enough to hold in the head. The official distance was 4 miles 2 furlongs and 74 yards. The maximum field was 34, cut from 40 the year before. Fourteen of the sixteen fences are jumped twice and two of them, the Chair and the Water Jump, once only. After the thirtieth comes a run-in of 494 yards with a kink in it called the Elbow. The Jockey Club owns the racecourse and stages the race, and the British Horseracing Authority regulates it and frames the weights. The rest of this page is how those parts fit together.
What type of race the Grand National is
Two words in the official description do most of the work. It is a steeplechase, meaning the obstacles are fences rather than the lighter flights used in hurdle races, and it is a handicap, meaning the weights are not equal. Our comparison of hurdles and fences sets out what separates the two kinds of obstacle; here it is enough to say that the National's fences are a kind found nowhere else in Britain, on a course used for only a handful of races a year.
| Element | As it stood for the 2025 running |
|---|---|
| Race type | Handicap steeplechase, classed as a Premier Handicap |
| Course | The Grand National course at Aintree, left-handed |
| Official distance | 4 miles 2 furlongs 74 yards |
| Fences | Sixteen on the course, thirty jumps in the race |
| Maximum field | 34 runners |
| Minimum age of horse | Seven years |
| Run-in | 494 yards from the final fence |
| Regulator | British Horseracing Authority |
The classification surprises people. For all its fame the National is not a Grade 1 race, because Grade 1 is reserved for contests at level weights. It sat for years as a Grade 3 handicap and, when the BHA renamed that tier of the jumps programme in the early 2020s, became a Premier Handicap. The label says nothing about quality or prize money. It says only that the weights are unequal.
Getting into the field
Entry is not open to any horse an owner cares to send. The race conditions set a minimum age of seven, raised from six after the review that followed the 2011 race, and a minimum official rating, which went up from 125 to 130 as part of the changes announced for 2024. A horse also needs to have shown that it stays and jumps in steeplechases, and a review panel looks at the jumping record of doubtful entries before they are allowed to take part.
More horses are entered than can run. The handicapper's ratings decide who gets in, from the top of the list downwards, until the limit is reached. That limit and the reasoning behind it are the subject of the safety limit on the field, and the measured trip, which has been quoted three different ways since 2012, is covered in how long the race is.
Why a handicap makes this a different contest from the Gold Cup
A horse rated twenty pounds better than a rival is, on the handicapper's reckoning, twenty pounds better. So it carries twenty pounds more. If the sums were perfect every runner would cross the line together, and the whole craft of the thing lies in the fact that the sums never are. One horse has improved since the weights were framed. Another turns out to love the fences. A third finds the last half-mile beyond it.
The general mechanism is laid out in our guide to how handicaps are framed in British racing. The National applies it at full stretch. The top weight for the 2025 race was 11st 12lb, and the range below that ran down by well over a stone. A rule of thumb used by handicappers over long distances is that a pound is worth roughly a length. Stretch that across a spread of twenty pounds and the leading horse in the ratings is being asked to give the bottom weight a start that would cover most of the run-in.
| Feature | Grand National | Cheltenham Gold Cup |
|---|---|---|
| Weights | Different for every horse, set by rating | The same for all, with an allowance for mares |
| Status | Premier Handicap | Grade 1 |
| Trip | About four and a quarter miles | About three and a quarter miles |
| Obstacles | Spruce-dressed National fences | Regulation birch fences |
| What the result tells you | The best-treated stayer who jumped round | The best staying chaser at level weights |
That table explains an absence. The best staying chaser in training is usually aimed at the Cheltenham Gold Cup in March, where it meets its rivals on equal terms, and its reward for being the best would be to carry top weight at Aintree a few weeks later against horses getting lumps of weight from it. Most connections decline. Golden Miller, in 1934, remains the only horse to have won both races in the same season. L'Escargot won two Gold Cups at the start of the 1970s and a National in 1975, by which time his rating and his weight had come down.
How the weights are arrived at, and when they are published, belongs to the page on National weights.
One consequence is worth stating plainly. The National does not identify the best horse in Britain and Ireland and has never claimed to. It identifies the horse whose ability, stamina and jumping were best matched to the weight it was given on one afternoon. That is a narrower achievement and a harder one to predict, which is a large part of why the race has the hold it does.
The start: a tape, a standing field and the lesson of 1993
There are no starting stalls in jump racing. The runners circle behind the start while girths are checked, the starter climbs a rostrum beside the course, and the field is called forward towards a tape stretched across the track. Since 2024 every race over the National fences has used a standing start: the horses walk in, stand in a line, and go when the tape is released. The older practice, in which a field jogged forward and the starter let them go if the line was fair, tended to produce a charge to the first fence. A standing start and a shorter run to that fence, which was moved 60 yards closer to the start in the same package of changes, were both aimed at taking speed out of the opening furlong.
- CirclingThe runners walk round behind the start while the starter's assistants check girths and the riders adjust their goggles.
- Called inThe starter mounts the rostrum and calls the field forward towards the tape at a walk.
- StandingThe horses come to a halt in a line behind the tape, with no jogging in from behind.
- ReleaseThe starter drops the flag and releases the tape, and the race is under way.
- RecallIf the start is not fair the starter signals a false start and flag operators down the course wave the field to a stop.
The sequence under the standing-start procedure used for races over the National fences since 2024.
A false start is the starter's call alone. If a horse breaks the tape, or the line is so ragged that the start is unfair, the starter raises a recall flag. That signal has to reach thirty-odd riders travelling away from it at speed and with a crowd roaring, so it is repeated by advance flag operators standing further down the course, in sight of the riders and well short of the first fence. Seeing the flags, the jockeys pull up, turn and walk back.
The race that never was
On 3 April 1993 that chain broke. The start had already been delayed by protesters on the course near the first fence. At the first attempt the tape caught on some of the riders and the field was recalled without trouble. At the second the tape wrapped itself round Richard Dunwoody, and the starter, Keith Brown, signalled another false start, but his flag did not unfurl as he waved it. The recall official further down the course did not stop the leaders. Thirty of the thirty-nine riders set off, and most of them kept going.
Seven horses completed the course and Esha Ness, ridden by John White and trained by Jenny Pitman, passed the post first in a race that did not exist. The Jockey Club, which regulated the sport at the time, declared it void and declined to re-run it.
An inquiry chaired by the High Court judge Sir Michael Connell followed. The procedure that came out of it is the ancestor of today's: a tape of three strands in place of one, a narrower start, fluorescent yellow flags for the recall, and an extra official posted further up the course as a backstop. The start has gone on being adjusted since. After two false starts in 2012 it was moved 90 yards further from the stands and their noise for 2013, which is also the change that first shortened the official distance.
The route in outline, from the Melling Road to the Chair
The National course is a rough triangle of about two and a quarter miles, far bigger than the park courses most chasers spend their winters on. The start is on the stands side. From there the field gallops away from the enclosures and crosses the Melling Road, a public road that cuts through the racecourse and is closed and covered for the day, to reach the part of the track racing people call "the country".
- Start to fence 1Away from the stands and over the Melling Road to the first fence.
- Fences 1 to 6A straight line of six fences, ending at Becher's Brook with its lower landing.
- Fences 7 and 8Round a left-hand bend over Foinavon to the Canal Turn, where the course turns sharply left.
- Fences 9 to 12Along the canal side over Valentine's Brook and three more, two of them with ditches.
- Fences 13 and 14Back across the Melling Road on to the racecourse proper for two plain fences.
- Fences 15 and 16The Chair and the Water Jump in front of the stands, on the first circuit only.
Fence numbers are those of the first circuit. On the second circuit the last stage is replaced by the Elbow and the run-in.
Six fences come in a line on the way out. The third is an open ditch, the first real question, and the sixth is Becher's Brook, where the ground on the landing side is lower than on the take-off side. Its history and the changes made to it have a page of their own, Becher's Brook and its drop. The seventh is Foinavon, one of the smallest on the course, and the eighth is the Canal Turn, where the track turns left through ninety degrees immediately after the fence.
Four fences follow alongside the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, starting with Valentine's Brook. Then the runners recross the Melling Road and come back on to the racecourse proper, the part of the track shared with the ordinary steeplechase course, with a long gallop to the thirteenth and fourteenth. In front of the stands stand the Chair, the tallest fence on the course, and the Water Jump, the lowest. They are jumped once. The second time round, the field leaves them on its left and heads for the finish.
Each of the sixteen is described, with its published height and its number on both circuits, in the full list of National fences.
How a horse's race ends early, and what the letters in the result mean
In 2024, the first year of the 34-runner limit, 32 horses went to post after two were withdrawn on the morning. Twenty-one finished. Of the eleven that did not, seven were pulled up and four unseated their riders. None fell. That breakdown is unusual by historical standards, and it shows why the abbreviations in a result are worth reading rather than lumping together as "fallers".
- Completed the course21horses
- Pulled up7horses
- Unseated rider4horses
From the official result of the 2024 running. No horse was recorded as having fallen.
Show the numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Completed the course | 21horses |
| Pulled up | 7horses |
| Unseated rider | 4horses |
| Abbreviation | Meaning | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| F | Fell | The horse itself came down at a fence |
| UR | Unseated rider | The horse stayed on its feet and the jockey came off |
| BD | Brought down | The horse was knocked over by another that had fallen |
| REF | Refused | The horse stopped in front of a fence and would not jump |
| PU | Pulled up | The rider chose to stop, usually on a tired or beaten horse |
| CO | Carried out | The horse was forced off the course by another runner or a loose horse |
| RO | Ran out | The horse went the wrong side of a fence or marker of its own accord |
The distinction between a fall and an unseat is about the horse. A fall is a jumping error bad enough to put the animal on the floor. An unseat is a mistake, a swerve or a collision that the horse survives upright and the rider does not. Either ends the race, because since November 2009 the Rules of Racing have forbidden a jockey to remount after parting company. The Nationals in which riders caught their horses and set off again, as seventeen of them did in the pile-up year of 1967, belong to a rulebook that no longer applies.
Brought down is kept separate for a reason that matters after the race as much as during it. A horse recorded as BD did nothing wrong. It met a fence correctly, or was galloping on the flat, and was taken off its feet by a faller it could not avoid. Trainers reading form, the handicapper assessing a run and the panel that scrutinises the jumping record of future National entries all treat the two letters differently. Folding one into the other would brand a sound jumper as a faller for somebody else's mistake.
Pulled up has become the commonest of the lot, and that is by design. A horse that is tailed off and tiring has nothing to gain from jumping eight more fences, and riders are expected to recognise the moment. A jockey who presses on with an exhausted horse risks a penalty from the stewards.
Loose horses and the fences the field is steered round
A horse that loses its rider does not usually stop. It is a herd animal in the middle of a herd, fit and excited, and its instinct is to stay with the others. So it gallops on, often in front because it carries no weight, and it jumps or does not jump as the mood takes it.
Riderless horses have decided Nationals. In 1967 one veered across the fence after Becher's on the second circuit and stopped almost the whole field. At the Canal Turn in 2001 another ran down the take-off side and took a group of runners out of the race. In 2005 the leader, Clan Royal, was carried out by loose horses on the approach to Becher's second time round. There is no rule that can prevent this, and the measures taken are practical ones: rails and wings that funnel a loose horse away from the racing line where the layout allows, and teams of horse catchers stationed round the course to take hold of them when they slow.
Bypassing a fence
The second problem is what lies on the landing side. If a horse or a jockey is being treated on the ground where the field will arrive on its next circuit, the fence cannot be jumped. For most of the race's history the only answers were screens, luck and speed. Aintree widened the course beside the fences so that the runners could be sent round the outside instead, and the BHA's instructions to racecourses set out how.
The procedure is visible on television if you know to look. Direction markers with arrows are placed in front of the obstacle, and officials wave chequered flags to tell the approaching riders that the fence is out. The jockeys steer round it on the outer and rejoin the course beyond.
It was first used in the National in 2011, when the fence that had been the fourth and Becher's Brook were both bypassed on the second circuit and the field jumped twenty-eight fences instead of thirty. It was used again the following year at the twenty-first, and in 2015 the Canal Turn was missed out second time round. A different flag does a different job: a yellow flag waved at the runners is the instruction to stop racing altogether.
The run-in and the Elbow: 494 yards that have undone leaders
Most British steeplechases finish within a furlong or so of the last fence. At Aintree the horse that jumps the thirtieth in front still has 494 yards to cover, more than a quarter of a mile, and it does not go in a straight line.
The reason is the layout in front of the stands. The Chair and the Water Jump stand on the main line of the course, and on the final circuit the runners have to be taken past them. So a rail leads the field off to one side after the last fence, and roughly halfway to the line the course angles back. That angle is the Elbow. A horse on the wrong side of a rival there can be carried wide or squeezed for room, and a rider who has been nursing a tired horse must change direction at the point where it has least left.
Fragments of commentary have fixed two finishes in the public mind.
In 1956 Devon Loch, owned by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and ridden by Dick Francis, had jumped the last clear and was within fifty yards of the post when he went down on the flat, sprawling on his belly with his legs out. He got up, but E.S.B. had gone past. No cause was ever established. Francis thought the wall of noise from the stands had startled the horse; others suggested cramp, or a shadow jump at the place where the Water Jump stood beside him. The phrase "to do a Devon Loch" entered the language for any collapse within sight of victory.
In 1973 the Australian chaser Crisp, carrying 12st at the top of the handicap, set off in front and built a lead that looked beyond recall. He was still far clear at the last. On the run-in he began to wander with exhaustion, and Red Rum, receiving 23lb, caught him in the final strides to win by three-quarters of a length. Both horses finished inside the course record that had stood since the 1930s. It was the handicap doing in public what it is meant to do, and it was the first of the three wins set out in Red Rum's Aintree record.
The practical lesson riders draw is that the last fence is not the finish. A horse has to be held together from there, kept straight through the Elbow and asked for its final effort late. Plenty of jockeys who have been second in the race will say that they went for home too soon.
Riders, and the weight each one carries
Professional jump jockeys, conditional jockeys still learning the trade and amateurs holding a permit all ride in the same race on the same terms. Amateurs have won it in living memory: Marcus Armytage on Mr Frisk in 1990, and Sam Waley-Cohen on Noble Yeats in 2022, in what he had announced beforehand would be his final ride. Women have ridden in the race since 1977, when Charlotte Brew took part after the Sex Discrimination Act opened licences to them, and Rachael Blackmore became the first to win it, on Minella Times in 2021.
What a rider needs is experience. The race conditions set a threshold, and in recent years it has been fifteen winners over jumps, at least ten of them in steeplechases. The requirement applies to everyone, professional or amateur, and it is the reason a promising young rider with a handful of wins cannot simply be booked for a fancied horse. The exact wording has been revised over time, so treat the figure as the recent standard and not as a constant.
What counts as weight
The handicapper allots a weight to the horse. The jockey has to make it. Before the race each rider sits on the scales in front of the Clerk of the Scales carrying the saddle, and the total must equal the allotted figure. The rider's own body, clothing and boots count. So do the saddle and the weight cloth beneath it. If the total is short, thin lead weights go into pockets in the cloth until it is right.
Some equipment is left off the scales by rule: the skull cap, the whip, the bridle and the number cloth among them. An allowance is made for the body protector every jockey must wear. The general picture of riding weights in Britain is in our guide to what jockeys weigh.
Because the National's weights start lower than many jump jockeys can comfortably do, booking a rider for a horse near the foot of the handicap is partly a question of who can make the weight without wasting to the point of weakness over four and a quarter miles. A jockey who cannot may be declared to carry a pound or two more than the allotted figure. That overweight is announced before the race.
Afterwards the process runs in reverse. The riders of the placed horses, and any others the Clerk of the Scales calls for, weigh in with the same equipment. A small tolerance is allowed for what a body loses in nine minutes of hard riding. Beyond it, a rider who weighs in light gets the horse disqualified, and until the announcement "weighed in" is made the result is provisional.
What finishing means, from the judge's photograph to the last horse home
The result of the Grand National is decided by the judge, an official appointed by the BHA who sits in a box on the line and uses the photo-finish camera where the naked eye cannot split them. The process is the same as at any British racecourse and is described in how the photo finish works.
It was needed in 2012. Sunnyhillboy led through the Elbow, and Neptune Collonges, a grey carrying 11st 6lb, ran him down in the final stride. The judge called for the print and gave it to Neptune Collonges by a nose, the smallest margin the rules recognise and the closest finish the race has had. Four and a quarter miles, thirty fences and the answer came down to the angle of two heads. The judge also records the official distances between the finishers, from a nose upwards through a short head, a head and a neck to lengths.
Behind the winner the placings matter more than in most races. Prize money in the National is paid a long way down the field, to tenth place in recent runnings, with the shares shrinking at each step. Owners, trainers, jockeys and stable staff all take a percentage of what the horse earns under the BHA's distribution rules. The figures change with each year's prize fund, so they are not quoted here; the mechanism is what stays the same, and it means the rider of a horse lying ninth at the last fence still has a reason to ride out to the line.
Then there are the ones who simply get round. Completing the course is treated as an achievement in its own right, and the record supports the instinct. In 2012 fifteen of forty runners finished. In 1928 two did, one of them after being remounted. A horse that jumps thirty National fences and gallops the full distance has done something most of the field in most years has not, and connections of the fifteenth home will generally tell you so. The outliers in both directions, from the biggest fields to the fastest times, are gathered on our page of records set in the race.
Who runs the race and who polices it
Two bodies share the National, and their names cause confusion because one of them used to do both jobs.
The Jockey Club owns Aintree, as it has since 1983, through its racecourse division. It builds the fences, sells the tickets, puts up the prize money with the sponsor and employs the clerk of the course, who is responsible for the ground and the track. When changes to the race are announced, such as the smaller field and the standing start for 2024, the Jockey Club makes the announcement, because it is the Jockey Club's race.
The British Horseracing Authority regulates. It was formed in 2007 and inherited the regulatory role the Jockey Club had held, latterly through an offshoot, for some two and a half centuries, which is why the body that declared the 1993 race void was the Jockey Club and the body that would do so now is the BHA. It licenses the jockeys and trainers, writes the Rules of Racing and supplies the officials on the day.
| Role | Who appoints | What they decide |
|---|---|---|
| Handicapper | British Horseracing Authority | The rating of each entry and so the weight it carries |
| Starter | British Horseracing Authority | Whether a start is fair, and when to recall the field |
| Judge | British Horseracing Authority | The finishing order and the official distances |
| Stewards | British Horseracing Authority | Whether the rules were broken during the race |
| Clerk of the Scales | British Horseracing Authority | Whether each rider weighed out and weighed in correctly |
| Clerk of the course | The Jockey Club, as the racecourse | The state of the ground and the track on the day |
The stewards have the widest brief. They watch the race from several camera angles, can call an enquiry into interference, the use of the whip or a rider's failure to pull up a beaten horse, and can alter the placings. How that works is set out in what a stewards' enquiry involves.
A distinction runs underneath all this. The Rules of Racing apply to every race in Britain, from a seller at a small track on a Monday to the National: how riders weigh out, what counts as interference, how the whip may be used. The race conditions apply to this race alone. They say which horses qualify, how experienced a rider must be, what the top weight is and how many may run. The conditions are drawn up by the racecourse and approved by the regulator, and they can be changed from one year to the next without a word of the rulebook being touched. Almost every change people think of as "a new Grand National rule" is a change to the conditions.
Three days at Aintree: the meeting built around the National
The National is the last big event of a three-day meeting that runs from Thursday to Saturday in early April, a few weeks after Cheltenham and towards the end of the core jumps season described in our guide to the racing year. It is the feature of the Saturday card and is surrounded by racing of a very different kind.
Aintree is really two tracks. Inside the National course lies the Mildmay course, an oval of regulation birch fences opened in the 1950s, and alongside that a hurdle course. The Mildmay takes its name from Lord Mildmay, the champion amateur rider who pressed for a nursery course at Aintree and died before it opened. Most of the meeting takes place on these two tracks, and most of its top-class racing never touches a spruce fence. The Grade 1 contests, among them the Bowl, the Aintree Hurdle, the Melling Chase and the Liverpool Hurdle, are level-weights races for horses that have often run at Cheltenham the month before. A racegoer who came only on the Thursday would see championship sport and might not see a National fence jumped in anger more than once. The layout of both tracks is described in our guide to Aintree racecourse.
Two races earlier in the week do go over the big fences. The Foxhunters' on the Thursday is confined to amateur riders on horses qualified from the hunting field and point-to-points, and has long been called the amateurs' National. The Topham on the Friday is a handicap for professionals. Both are run over about two miles and five furlongs, a little more than one circuit, and both give horses and jockeys a sight of the fences without the full distance.
So by the time the National field goes to post, the fences have been raced over twice that week and repaired after each. The spruce knocked out on Thursday and Friday is replaced overnight. The ground has been watered or left alone according to the weather, with the stated aim in recent years of avoiding quick going; what those going descriptions mean is explained in our page on the going.
How the Grand National came to work this way
The usual starting date is 26 February 1839, when a horse called Lottery, ridden by Jem Mason, won a steeplechase at Aintree that the newspapers of the day described in national terms. Even that is disputed. Steeplechases were run in the Liverpool area in the three years before, and many historians of the race count the first of those, in 1836, as the true beginning. The race's own tradition settled on 1839, and the number attached to each running follows from that.
It was not a handicap. The weights in 1839 were fixed by the conditions of the race and not by anybody's assessment of each horse, and the course bore little resemblance to the modern one: much of it was ploughed farmland, the obstacles were the banks, hedges and brooks that happened to divide the fields, and in front of the stands the horses jumped a stone wall. The riders were told where to go rather than kept in by rails. Captain Martin Becher fell at the first brook that day and gave it his name.
The change that made the race what it is came in 1843, when Edward Topham, a handicapper of repute whose family would run Aintree for generations, turned it into a handicap. The name Grand National followed a few years later. The stone wall went in the same period, its place taken by the Water Jump, which the Jockey Club dates to 1841, and over the following decades the plough gave way to turf and the course was railed in.
| Year | Change |
|---|---|
| 1839 | Lottery wins the race usually counted as the first Grand National |
| 1843 | The race becomes a handicap |
| 1977 | A woman rides in the race for the first time |
| 1984 | A safety limit of 40 runners is introduced |
| 1993 | The race is declared void after a failed recall |
| 2009 | Remounting after a fall is banned under the Rules of Racing |
| 2012 | Minimum age raised to seven after the 2011 review |
| 2013 | Start moved 90 yards forward and fence cores made flexible |
| 2024 | Field cut to 34, standing start, minimum rating raised to 130 |
Read that table and the idea of an unchanging race falls apart. The Grand National looks the same from one decade to the next because the things a television camera shows have been kept: the green fences, the long run to the first, the turn by the canal, the Elbow. The conditions underneath have been rewritten again and again, most often after a year in which something went wrong.
The honest way to describe how it works is therefore to give a year with every number. The distance, the field and the weights quoted near the top of this page are those of 2025. The structure around them, a handicap over nearly two circuits of Aintree with a long run-in, has lasted since the 1840s. More racing explainers written in the same way are collected on the England hub, and shorter pieces appear on the blog.