Auroras chasing Grand National encore

Friday 19 April 2013, 11:00am

English Grand National hero Auroras Encore heads a field of 26 runners in the Scottish Grand National at Ayr on Saturday.

Sue Smith's 11-year-old recorded a shock 66-1 victory in the Aintree spectacular a fortnight ago and having gone up 11lb in the weights, he has to carry a huge burden of 11st 12lb this weekend.

The veteran aims to become the first horse since the legendary Red Rum in 1974 to complete the rarely-attempted National double, with Aintree partner Ryan Mania returning from injury in time to take the ride.

Bingley-based Smith has a second runner in the shape of Fill The Power.

Ante-post favourite Rival D'Estruval is in the line-up following his fall when still in contention in the National Hunt Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.

Other leading contenders include Alan King's Godsmejudge, David Pipe's Midlands National winner Big Occasion, the John Wade-trained Always Right and Neptune Equester from the stable of Brian Ellison.

The sole Irish-trained runner is Thomas Gibney's Lion Na Bearnai, winner of last year's Irish Grand National but not seen since being pulled up in the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury at the start of December.

Conditions at Ayr are described as heavy following substantial rainfall over the last 24 hours.

– PAA

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »