Aintree Grand National 11/4/26 - Jordans (Not The Electrics One)

I don't want to get all Monty Python "Four Yorkshiremen" but, at Aintree, Cheltenham and Royal Ascot, you really do have to get up half an hour before you go to bed. Steve's WhatsApp reply to pick up time is not printable in a family blog. Breakfast, if we'd had it in the digs, would've been approximately 20 minutes after dinner on Friday night.

As always, when you know you have to get up early it's tough to sleep, even more so when you know it's the biggest betting day of the year. Constantly checking the 6 alarms you've set are still active, like the IPhone fairies were going to hack my phone and mysteriously delete all of them. No matter, despite nodding off repeatedly on the couch on Friday evening, the body clock decided 4:30am was the appointed time for wakey wakey and no amount of counting backwards from 100 or repeating the same meaningless word over and over again was going to get me back off. Thoughts of where to pitch in dominated the darkness and I'd given up all hope of further sleep by about 5:45.

Two vehicles needed today as we had all the equipment to pack up after racing. Simon was picking up Steve; the phone buzzed from Simon wondering if Steve was awake, the phone buzzed two minutes later from Steve wondering why Simon was nowhere to be seen. I was too busy propping matchsticks in eyes.

We arrive and Matthew heads off to the gym for the 3rd morning running. I barely have the energy to give him his ticket. I'm hoping adrenaline does its job at some point. We are saved, not only by the burger joint offering bacon rolls despite being sans menu, but also by the lovely lady in the coffee booth unhitching the side door and seducing us with promises of "extra shots". The bacon lady decided "extra rashers" were also a thing - we must've looked awful for the pity portions to kick in but we were eternally grateful.

We pitch in - two in The Chair Enclosure, so we could take turns kipping round the back of the joints as much as anything else. We left a gap between the two pitches as we're not fans of putting them side by side and our friend Pete duly became the meat in the CairnBet sandwich and immediately complained about being said meat. I pointed out the other 46 pitches he had access to and muttered something about "southerlies, not easterlies today". He had the good grace to smile. We like Pete...

Matthew returned around 10:30 with tales of his current bench pressing activity - the kg numbers were huge - as a bloke who could barely get bacon sandwich from hip to mouth 90 minutes earlier I listened in wonder and no little envy.

To pass the time, we got a little philosophical with the nicest couple on the track, Colin and Gill. We reached the inevitable conclusion that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step and a man who moves amount begins with the smallest of stones. I was hoping that meant we'd finally get our costs back for the week and maybe sneak some profit too.

So, before you read this, please be aware that this is probably the best betting day we have all year. We take plenty of bets and the Saturday field sizes were excellent. This day is probably more in our favour than any other day and it would be totally disingenuous for me to pretend otherwise. We may not be the biggest and certainly not the best but we don't make stuff up either.

1) The first is always the quietest but we kicked off with a dream start on outsider Mirabad who beat the odds on favourite (small loser in book) with a fair degree of comfort. Places were rotten in the worst each way race (from our point of view), despite the jolly coming second, but we had no grounds for complaint and we were finally pretty much covering our expenses for the week now after 15 races of trying. Free swing for the next 6. For completeness we also stood Mighty Bandit

2) Best result in the book alert. After hitting the crossbar more times in the previous two days than Darwin Nunez from inside the 6 yard box, we hit a monster with Wade Out. Only took 25 quid on it and the payout slip was shorter than Kevin's shopping list when we only need sausages. We allowed ourselves a surreptitious twirl.

3) Couldn't lay Ballyfad and was winning us far more than we'd like but that's the nature of the CairnBet beast. Bossman Jack was a modest winner - we certainly didn't want Scorpio Rising or a couple of rags, but we were rewarded with our best place result of the week as we avoided everything that looked vaguely nasty in the each way book. A nice, and unexpected, win overall.

4) My memory is vague but it was either this race or the following one where it "rained" golf balls. Shards of ice bouncing off heads and creating streams where there was previously only tarmac and grass. It wasn't hard to Find The River. All you could do was hunker down and hope for the best. We wanted LookAway like you can't believe but it was beaten by a head. We got Mr Hope Street which wasn't entirely hopeless for us after the place Gods looked down on us yet again but wasn't the jackpot that was a few pixels behind. I advised each and every LookAway each way punter to "hide your eyes" from the replays. There was one bloke from Dunfermline who even got it. And I know our mate Pinno will too so it was worth the effort.

5) Won far more than we should on smashed up 3rd favourite Home By The Lee and we continued to do no wrong place wise. Jingko Blue and Strong Leader were the ones to avoid and the joint may have taken a kicking had Take No Chances prevailed as well.

6) I've seen plenty of headlines about the payouts on Maximus from the big boys. I have no idea how their books looked and I'm not going to say it wasn't popular - of course it was. But factor in that there's 34 runners, the public are betting them all and the turnover was the biggest we'll see, the SP was 9/2 (as an aside the shortest price we laid was 13/2 but that's another debate for another time) so it wasn't a guaranteed liability and we ended up winning on the race. Nothing like the absolute jackpot +++++ we would've had on Jordans but I can't say we lost on it. Wasn't even vaguely close to our best result of the week, but not a wipeout either. Regular readers will know that we get killed on Jordan Electrics at Hamilton Park on a monotonously regular basis and, when its (almost) namesake went clear with 2 to go with finally wondered if we were going to have Jordan joy. We didn't. Despite a winning race it still felt a tough one to take with the "What If" factor off the scale. Maybe next year... Please don't think badly of us!

7) There's always the next race and, as it turned out, we saved the best until last. Something like 33s into 12s overnight and the average punter reading the racecard isn't going anywhere near it, and they didn't. Best result in the book and best result of the week and 2nd best day overall on track since Covid.

So there we have it. Of course Grand National Saturday favours us more than any other day with a combination of turnover and field sizes and we did get our wages in the end, though on Friday evening there was some concern we'd be working the week for nowt. In the eternal, and largely friendly, struggle between punter and The Auld Enemy I appreciate that this may not fill everyone with joy but Matthew did get fish with his chips on Saturday night so it's not all bad!

Thanks to everyone who punted with us over the 3 days, especially Tony who I hope had steak with his chips yesterday evening. We are a small firm and even this blind squirrel can find a few nuts from time to time. Ayr next up for us on Saturday. Until then...