How Many Horses Run in the Grand National? The Safety Limit
How many horses run in the Grand National at Aintree: the UK safety limit of 34 since 2024, why it was cut from 40, and the field sizes the race has seen.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Grand National24 min read
- Maximum field from 2024
- 34
- Previous cap, 1984 to 2023
- 40
- Largest field, 1929
- 66
- Smallest field, 1883
- 10
Thirty-four. That is the most horses permitted to start the Grand National at Aintree, the ceiling the Jockey Club and the British Horseracing Authority set for the 2024 running and kept for 2025. Before that the cap was forty, and it had been forty since 1984. The reduction was announced on 12 October 2023, six months after a running in which a horse was killed at the first fence and the start was held up by protesters on the course.
The ceiling and the field are not the same thing. Thirty-four is the number allowed to be declared; the number that actually lines up behind the tape can be smaller, because a horse can be withdrawn after declarations with a minor injury, a vet's concern or a change in the ground. In 2024, the first year of the new limit, 32 started after Run Wild Fred and Chambard were both found lame on the morning of the race and withdrawn. So the plain answer to how many horses run in the Grand National is: up to 34, and in practice usually a few fewer than the maximum or exactly that, depending on what happens in the last forty-eight hours.
The field size limit in one paragraph, and why the number on the day can be lower
Every race in Britain has a maximum number of runners, and the Grand National's is unusual only in being so large and so closely watched. The race conditions published by Aintree set it at 34. Final declarations close two days before the race. If more horses are declared than the limit allows, the lowest in the weights are eliminated, and a small number may be named as reserves who can take the place of a horse withdrawn before a fixed deadline. Once that deadline has passed, nobody comes in. A horse that is lame on Saturday morning leaves a gap that stays empty.
That is why the figure printed in a racecard on the Friday and the figure who set off are sometimes different. The arrangement for reserves has itself been altered several times, and the mechanics of eliminations and the reserve list are set out in our guide to how the National weights work, since the order of elimination is the order of the handicap.
A few runnings and what lined up
| Running | Limit in force | Horses that started | What brought the number down |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | 40 | 40 | Full field in the first year of the forty cap |
| 1993 | 40 | 39 | One short of the cap; two false starts left 30 running in a race declared void |
| 2012 | 40 | 40 | Full field |
| 2024 | 34 | 32 | Two withdrawn on the morning of the race |
The last row is the useful one. It shows the new ceiling in operation, and it shows it doing what a ceiling does: capping the field without promising a full one.
What a safety limit is, and who sets one for every race in Britain
Walk the course at any British racecourse and the width of the track, the length of the fences and the shape of the bends tell an inspector how many horses can race over it without being forced into each other. That judgement becomes a number, known in the sport as the safety limit or safety factor, and it is fixed for each course and each distance. A two-mile chase at a tight, sharp track might be capped somewhere in the teens. A wide galloping course with long fences can take far more.
The BHA, as the regulator, approves those figures through its racecourse inspection process, and they are recorded so that a race cannot be opened to more runners than the course can safely carry. Course alterations change them. Widen a bend or add a fence wing and the inspector may allow more horses; move a running rail or narrow a fence and the figure comes down. When a race attracts more declarations than its safety limit, it is either reduced by elimination, as with a big handicap, or divided into two separate races, which is the usual answer for a lowly novice event on a busy day.
The Grand National is a special case in two ways. Its fences are much wider than ordinary steeplechase fences, so the course could physically accommodate a very large field, and in the past it did. And its limit is not left only to the arithmetic of track widths. Since the 2011 review it has been treated as a welfare decision, made by the course's owners and the regulator together, and changed when the evidence pointed that way.
Where 34 sits against an ordinary race
A typical British jumps race has nowhere near 34 runners. Most park-course chases are run with single-figure fields, and even the big handicaps of the winter rarely reach the low twenties. The National remains the largest field in British jump racing by a distance. The cut from forty did not make it ordinary. It made it a little less extraordinary.
Field sizes through history, from ten runners to sixty-six
Ten horses ran in 1883. Zoedone, ridden by the Austrian aristocrat Count Charles Kinsky, won from a field that size, and no Grand National has had fewer starters before or since. Fewer than half a century later the race had swung to the opposite extreme.
The 1920s were the decade of the crowd. The fame of the race grew with newsreel and wireless, and owners who would never have entered a moderate chaser for anything else entered it for Aintree. In 1928, forty-two went to post. The pile-up at the Canal Turn that year, when most of the field was stopped and only Tipperary Tim and the remounted Billy Barton finished, did nothing to put people off. In 1929 sixty-six started, and Gregalach won.
Sixty-six horses cannot all see the first fence. A runner in the middle of a pack that size has a horse's quarters a length in front and another on each side, and it meets its first obstacle with no view of it until the last moment. That was the problem every later limit was trying to solve.
When the forty-runner limit arrived
Large fields remained the norm through the middle of the century, with forty-plus starters common in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. The ceiling was cut to forty for the 1984 race, the year after the Jockey Club completed its purchase of the racecourse; the limit it replaced was fifty, which no field had come close to filling for years. Forty then stood for four decades, through every running from 1984 to 2023 bar the void race of 1993, which started with thirty-nine.
| Year | Runners | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1883 | 10 | Smallest field in the race's history |
| 1928 | 42 | Two finishers after the Canal Turn pile-up |
| 1929 | 66 | Largest field ever to start |
| 1984 | 40 | Forty-runner limit in force; record 23 finished |
| 2012 | 40 | Two fatalities; fifteen finished |
| 2024 | 32 | First running under the 34 limit; no fallers |
Forty was not a figure anyone treated as sacred. It was a practical number for a wide course, and by the 2010s it was the size of field that the public associated with the race. That association made the 2023 decision to reduce it a bigger story than a six-horse change would otherwise have been.
The case for cutting the field to 34
The Jockey Club did not claim that 34 was a magic number. Its case, set out when the changes were announced in October 2023, was about probabilities and congestion. A larger field means more horses arriving at the same fence at the same moment, less room for any one of them to pick its own stride, and more horses close enough behind a faller to be hampered or brought down.
The review behind the decision looked at the race's own record and found that the risk of a horse falling, unseating its rider or being brought down was linked to how many horses were around it when it jumped. Bunching was heaviest in the first half-mile, where the whole field is still together, and the review's conclusion was that removing six runners would ease that bunching at the early fences in particular. The published account presented the reduction as one change among several, intended to work alongside the moved first fence and the new start rather than on its own.
That last point matters. Nobody can isolate the effect of six fewer horses, because the same year brought a standing start, a shorter run to the first fence, a lower eleventh fence and a higher minimum rating. Any change in the results afterwards belongs to the package.
What was given up
Six places in the National are six owners, trainers and jockeys who do not get a ride in the most valuable jumps race in Britain. They are always the six lowest in the weights, so the cut fell on the horses with the smallest official ratings. Some in the sport argued that this changed the character of the race, which had prided itself on giving modest chasers a chance. Others answered that the minimum rating had been rising for years anyway, and that the horses at the bottom of a forty-runner field were the ones most likely to be outpaced and tired by halfway.
The second argument is the stronger one. A horse that is struggling to keep up over the first circuit is a horse jumping on tired legs in the second. Fatigue is a well-documented factor in falls over long distances, and taking out the least capable horses in the race is a reasonable response to it, even if it costs something to the race's old reputation as a lottery.
- 34runnersLimit from 2024
- 40runnersLimit from 1984 to 2023
- 66runnersRecord field, 1929
- 10runnersSmallest field, 1883
The two limits are the caps in the race conditions. The record field and the smallest field are the actual starters in 1929 and 1883.
The standing start and the shorter run to the first fence
Footage of older Nationals shows the problem plainly. The tape goes up, forty horses who have been jig-jogging forward in a line break into a gallop, and by the time they reach the first fence they are travelling flat out, packed together, and fighting their riders. It was a charge, and charges cause falls.
For 2024 two changes were made together. The start became a standing start, in which the horses walk in towards the tape and halt before it is released, so that nobody gets a flying advantage. And the first fence was moved sixty yards closer to the start. Less run-up means less time to build speed before the first jump. The Jockey Club put the aim in terms of reducing the speed of the field at the first fence, and of taking the heat out of the opening seconds of the race.
Why the first fence above all
The first is not a large fence by Aintree standards. It is a plain fence with a level landing, smaller than several that follow. What makes it dangerous is the context: a full field, every horse fresh and keen, and riders who know that a slow start leaves them trapped behind a wall of horses for the first circuit. Several serious falls in modern Nationals have come at the first. In 2023 Hill Sixteen fell there and was fatally injured.
The start itself had been adjusted before. In 2013 it was moved about ninety yards away from the grandstands and the noise of the crowd, after the two false starts of the year before. Because the tape went forward rather than back, that move also shortened the run to the first fence and trimmed the race distance a little. The 2024 change shortened the same stretch again, from the other end, by bringing the fence towards the tape. Our step-by-step account of how the National start and race are run covers the recall procedure and what happens after a false start, which belongs there rather than here.
- 2012The landing side of the first fence is levelled after the review that followed the 2011 race.
- 2013The start is moved about 90 yards away from the stands and nearer the first fence, and twelve of the sixteen fences get flexible plastic cores.
- 2024The first fence is moved 60 yards nearer the start, shortening the run in which the field gathers speed.
- 2024A standing start replaces the walking-in start, so the field goes from a halt behind the tape.
Dates are the year of the first running affected. Each change was announced by the course owners or the BHA in the months before.
How the fences were softened, from timber cores to level landings
The sixteen fences look much as they did in the 1970s. Green, wide and dressed in spruce. What is underneath has changed almost completely.
Until 2012 the core of each fence was a rigid timber frame with wooden stakes driven into the ground. A horse that got in too close and hit the base of the fence met something that did not give. After the deaths of 2011 and 2012 the course rebuilt twelve of the sixteen fences around flexible plastic cores for the 2013 race. The fence still stands the same height to the eye and still demands a proper jump, but a horse that blunders into the bottom of it finds the core yields and springs back.
The dated list
| Year | Change | Fence or area |
|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Brook levelled and landing raised | Becher's Brook |
| 2012 | Landing levelled; height of fourth fence reduced; toe boards raised | First fence, fourth fence, Becher's |
| 2013 | Rigid timber cores replaced by plastic | Twelve of the sixteen fences |
| 2024 | Fence moved 60 yards nearer the start | First fence |
| 2024 | Height reduced by two inches | Eleventh fence, an open ditch |
The take-off boards at the base of each fence, the toe boards that give a horse a ground line to judge its jump from, were raised and padded so that they are easier to see and less punishing to hit. Landings, especially at Becher's, were levelled. The Becher's drop was reduced again in 2012, and the full account of that fence, with the 1990 remodelling and the changes since, is on our page about the drop at Becher's Brook.
Heights barely moved. The fourth lost two inches, the eleventh two more in 2024. The approach has been to keep the look and the challenge of the fences while taking away what punished an error. A reader who wants every fence, its number on both circuits and its published height should go to the full list of National fences; this page keeps only the changes that bear on safety.
Before the tape goes up: vets, ratings and who is allowed in
A horse does not get into the National just by being entered. It has to pass several tests set out in the race conditions, and several of them have been tightened since 2011.
The first is age. The minimum was raised from six to seven for the 2012 race. The second is rating, and it has been moved up in steps: the 2011 review raised the floor from 110 to 120 for 2012, and for 2024 it went to 130, up from 125. The third is experience. Each runner must have shown a record of completing, and placing, in steeplechases over long distances, and a panel set up by the course and the BHA looks at the jumping record of any entry whose form raises doubts. That panel can refuse a horse. It is a quiet part of the process, but it removes in advance a type of horse that once took its chance and often fell early.
The veterinary checks
Every runner is examined by veterinary officers before the race, including an inspection on the day itself, and a horse that does not satisfy the vets is withdrawn. The checks are routine at big meetings, but at Aintree they carry more weight because the race is the most scrutinised in British racing and a lame horse sent out over thirty fences would be a disaster for everyone involved.
The riders face conditions too. A jockey must have ridden a set number of winners over jumps, a proportion of them in steeplechases, and the number is written into each year's race conditions. It applies to amateurs and professionals alike.
The parade and the pre-race routine
Before a big race, the field parades in front of the stands, and for years the National's parade was long. Horses stood and walked in a line past a crowd of tens of thousands, with music and announcements, for longer than they would at any other meeting. Critics argued that this wound horses up before the race and made the start harder to manage. For 2024 the parade in front of the grandstands was scrapped altogether, and the race was moved earlier in the afternoon, partly to get it onto better ground. The detail of the pre-race programme has been changed more than once and is best checked in the arrangements for a given year.
- EntryThe horse must be seven or older, rated at least 130 and have the required record of completing in long chases.
- Review panelEntries with a doubtful jumping record can be examined by a panel and refused.
- DeclarationsUp to 34 are declared two days out, with the lowest in the weights eliminated if there are more.
- Veterinary inspectionVets examine each runner, including on race day, and can withdraw any horse.
- StartThe field walks in to a standing start and goes when the tape is released.
The order of checks as they have operated in recent runnings. The thresholds are set in each year's race conditions.
During the race and after the post: bypasses, catching pens and cooling
The safety measures do not stop at the start. A good many of them are invisible on television until something goes wrong.
Every fence can be bypassed. If a horse or a rider is being treated on the landing side of a fence on the second circuit, the fence is marked off with chequered flags and the runners are directed round it. This happened at Becher's in 2011, when veterinary staff were still working behind screens as the field came round again, and in other runnings since. The bypass routes were built so that the field can be steered past any fence on the course, not only the most famous ones.
Loose horses
A horse that has lost its rider keeps running. It is fit and excited and it stays with the field, often in front because it carries no weight. Loose horses have decided Nationals and caused falls. The answer has been practical: catching pens and teams of horse catchers stationed at intervals round the course, with running rails and wings shaped to steer a loose horse off the racing line where the layout allows. A riderless horse that slows near a catching pen is taken hold of before it can cause trouble on the second circuit.
After the finish
Beyond the winning post there is a cooling area where horses are washed down with cold water as soon as they pull up. The race is run over more than four miles and the effort leaves horses hot and dehydrated, especially on a warm day. The cooling arrangements were expanded after the 2011 running, which was held in warm sunshine, and they are now one of the first things a finishing horse sees.
Vets and horse ambulances are stationed round the course throughout the race. They can reach any fence quickly. Screens are carried to shield a horse being treated from public view, a practice that tells its own story about how often they are needed and why.
How many horses finish the Grand National
Fewer than start. Always. The question is how many fewer.
In 1928 two finished from forty-two. In 1984 twenty-three of the forty came home, the record. In 2012 fifteen of forty finished. In 2024, the first running under the 34 limit, twenty-one of the thirty-two finished, and the result showed no fallers at all: seven pulled up and four unseated their riders. That was a striking result, and the safety changes were credited for it, but one running is one running.
Why most non-finishers pull up rather than fall
Look at the result of any modern National and the commonest letters next to non-finishers are PU, for pulled up, and UR, for unseated rider. F, for fell, has become less common. That reflects a deliberate shift. Jockeys are expected to pull up a horse that is tired or tailed off rather than push it on over another eight fences, and the stewards can act against a rider who keeps going on an exhausted horse. The 2009 rule banning remounting closed off the practice that produced the second-placed finisher of 1928.
Unseats are more common than falls for a different reason. The modern fences, with their soft cores and level landings, are more forgiving of a mistake than the old ones. A horse that clips a fence is more likely to stay on its feet and lose its rider than to go down itself. That is a better outcome for the horse, and it is what the changes were designed to produce.
The three reviews: 1989, 2011 to 2012 and 2023
The modern safety record of the National is the product of three reviews. Each followed deaths at the race. Each led to changes that are still in place.
1989
On the first circuit in 1989 two horses, Seeandem and Brown Trix, died after falls at Becher's Brook. The racecourse's owners responded with work on the fence for the 1990 race: the brook on the landing side was filled in to a point where a fallen horse could not slide back into it, and the landing was levelled so that the drop was less severe. It was the first major alteration to a National fence in a generation, and it showed that the course would change its most famous obstacle when the evidence was strong enough.
2011 to 2012
In 2011 Ornais and Dooneys Gate died in falls during the race, and the British Horseracing Authority led a review with Aintree that reported later that year. Its title was The Grand National: A Review of Safety and Welfare. It looked at the fences, the start, the age and experience of runners and the veterinary arrangements, and its recommendations took effect for 2012. In that year's race two more horses, Synchronised and According To Pete, died. Aintree then went further, rebuilding the cores of twelve fences with plastic for 2013 and moving the start away from the stands.
2023
Hill Sixteen fell at the first fence in 2023 and was fatally injured. The race was also delayed by protesters who got onto the course before the start. The Jockey Club conducted a review with the BHA, and the outcome, announced on 12 October 2023, was the package that took effect for 2024: thirty-four runners, the first fence moved sixty yards closer to the start, a standing start, the eleventh fence lowered and the minimum rating raised to 130.
| Review | Prompted by | Who led it | Main outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | Two deaths at Becher's | Racecourse owners | Becher's brook filled and landing levelled for 1990 |
| 2011 | Two deaths during the race | BHA with Aintree | Minimum age raised to seven, landings levelled, toe boards raised |
| 2012 | Two more deaths | Aintree with the BHA | Plastic cores in twelve fences, start moved away from the stands |
| 2023 | Death at the first fence | Jockey Club with the BHA | Field cut to 34, first fence moved, standing start |
The pattern of the table is uncomfortable but true. Each set of changes came after a death, not before one. That is not unusual in sports safety, where incidents expose risks that did not seem pressing until they were. It is a reason to take seriously the critics who argue that the race was slow to act, even if the changes it has made have been substantial.
The argument about whether the race should run at all
Animal welfare organisations have campaigned against the Grand National for decades. Their argument is straightforward: the race asks horses to jump thirty large fences over more than four miles in a big field, and horses have died doing it. Some campaigners call for it to be banned outright. Others argue for further reductions in the field and in the size of the fences, to the point where it would become an ordinary long-distance chase.
The sport's reply is that the race has changed more than any other in British racing over the last fifteen years, that its fatality rate has fallen, and that the horses who run in it are well cared for and are bred and trained to jump. The Jockey Club and the BHA point to the changes listed above, and to the 2024 result, when no horse fell.
What the protest of 2023 changed
In April 2023 protesters climbed onto the course before the start. Some were removed from the track and many were arrested. The race was delayed, and the horses had to be held at the start while the course was cleared. The protest did not stop the race, but it showed that the welfare debate had moved from leaflets outside the gates to the course itself.
What the figures can show
Here the honest answer is: less than either side would like. The National is run once a year with a field of up to 34. Fatality rates in a sample that small swing sharply from one year to the next. A single death changes the percentage dramatically, and a year with none tells you less than it seems to. The changes since 2012 have coincided with fewer deaths at the race, and that is a genuine improvement. Whether the 2024 changes will reduce the risk further cannot yet be shown from one or two runnings.
The better test is the full set of races over the National fences, including the Topham, the Becher Chase and the Grand Sefton, which together give a larger sample. Even that is small by statistical standards. The judgement that the race is safer than it was is well supported. The judgement that it is safe enough is a question of values, not data.
How the National's field compares with other big jumps races
Thirty-four runners is still a very large field for jump racing. The Topham Chase, run over the National fences on the Friday of the Aintree meeting at about two miles and five furlongs, carries a lower limit than the National itself, as do the Becher Chase and the Grand Sefton over the same obstacles in the winter. So do the Scottish Grand National at Ayr and the Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse, the two races closest to Aintree's in spirit. Every one of those figures is set in that race's own conditions for the year it is run, and a limit quoted from memory is the kind of number that has quietly changed since: the place to read it is the conditions published for the running in question.
Cheltenham's big handicaps run smaller. The festival's handicap chases and hurdles have fields typically capped in the twenties, because the course is tighter and the fences closer together than Aintree's. A field of twenty-four at Cheltenham can look as congested as one of thirty-four at Aintree. Our guide to the Cheltenham Festival covers that meeting's races.
What that comparison says
The National's limit is set higher than other big chases because its course is wider and its fences longer. When welfare groups pressed for thirty rather than thirty-four in 2023, Aintree's answer was that cutting the field that far could backfire: a smaller field spreads out, goes faster, and a faster race over these fences is not obviously a safer one. Whether thirty-four is the right side of that line is exactly the sort of claim a single season cannot settle. The cut from forty narrowed the gap to the other big chases, but the National remains the largest field in British jump racing by a margin. Even at thirty-four, the race asks horses to jump in a crowd that nothing else in the season prepares them for.
The question of how many horses run in the Grand National will probably be revisited. Every change since 1989 has followed a death or a review, and the 2023 decision was presented as part of a process rather than an end point. If the field is cut again it will be for the same reason it was cut in 2023: that fewer horses arriving at the early fences together means fewer chain reactions. Our hub of guides for readers in England has the rest of the Aintree pages, and the National's long list of extremes, from the fastest time to the most wins, is on the page of Grand National records.