Racing: Aintree's magic mix of glory and despair

The Grand National invades the senses once again today. It offers glory and pain and probably, for some unfortunate horse, a "humane" death behind a screen.

As always, ambivalence comes with the thrill. Except, that is, when you speak to Carl Llewellyn. "The National is more than a horse race," says the double winner. "It is something that when you experience it, it seems unbelievable – quite unique. It has a force no one can stop. It is not cruel to horses, it is a race. Horses race."

However, the questions still hammer home at a time when the heartlands of racing are obliged to march against the collapse of old certainties in the country life.

Is the scale of the race simply too big... does it ask too high a price of those who respond to its challenge? Is the "moderation" of Becher's and The Chair more window dressing than a real imposition of new safety standards?

In the age of political correctness, and fox-hunting bans, does the National still go too far?

It is a battery of questions and to each one of them Llewellyn says no. No, not just to a proposition but a heresy.

It is a no to the possibility that at the start line today there will be a horse or a man who would rather be somewhere else. Llewellyn, who will be riding the race for the 12th time, says that on no other day of the year does he ever feel more alive.

Of today's riders, when he mounts Bindaree, he will be the only one to have won the race twice. It makes him feel a little proprietorial, he admits, and, also, fiercely protective. Horses die, yes, and men risk terrible injury, but you have to be at the start line, you have to feel the rush of the adrenalin, you have to know the intensity of that, to understand that the race creates its own momentum – and justification. For some, it is too cruel an exploitation of equine courage. For others, of Llewellyn's school, the spirit-draining sight of those screens going up around a stricken animal – the current meeting's first victim ironically at a hurdle rather than one of the huge fences, was Jonjo O'Neill's Coolnagorna on Thursday afternoon – is the hard but ultimately acceptable price for the chance to see horses and men at their bravest and their best.

Llewellyn, the ageing jockey – he prefers the word "experienced" – is utterly unequivocal. The race need not be defended. It is everything. It is the joy and the pain, the mountain-tops and the pits of a career that was first inspired on this day 30 years ago.

It started with vicarious pain. He watched the great Crisp beaten down by the impertinent Red Rum in the long, heart-tearing run from the Elbow. "I was just a kid watching it on the television," Llewellyn recalls, "but I was very moved. Crisp was giving away so much weight (23lb) and when the race was over I had tears in my eyes. I vowed that one day I would be part of that race, and of course in the next few years I realised what a performance Crisp had put in because we didn't know then what a great horse Red Rum was.

"Down all the years, and with all my experiences, my view on the National has never changed. Cheltenham is the great festival of our sport, but in the end the Gold Cup and the Champion Hurdle are two more very big races. The National goes beyond the boundaries of the sport. It belongs to everybody."

Strictly speaking, Llewellyn belongs to it. He has been subject to all of its gifts – and its savage twists.

The most shattering came in 1993 – the year after the giant Party Politics had carried him to his first victory. It was the fiasco of the false start and abandonment of the race. One trainer, Jenny Pitman, was in tears of rage, but Llewellyn recalls: "I just sucked it up – what could I do? But there was no doubt I never left a racecourse feeling so down, even after I'd broken the odd bone."

Llewellyn's rage was that Party Politics was going even better than in the previous winning year. "As we came to the end of the first circuit, I was so happy I almost needed to pinch myself. The horse was jumping beautifully. It seemed to have so much in the tank it was hard to believe."

In 1998, in going that was as heavy as the Somme, he gutted it out on Earth Summit – which, ironically, was carrying 23lb less than Suny Bay, its only serious rival left in the field, which had been whittled down to just six of 37 starters. He remembers it as if was yesterday. "When I saw Brad [Graham Bradley] on my inside, I thought, 'Oh no, that's a horse that could beat me'. But at the same time I was happy to be there. Brad and me are mates, and at that point in the race you are always just so happy to be still in with a chance... that alone is something that almost takes you out of your body."

Three horses had to be put down in that National, but Llewellyn points out that soft going generally means safer going. Most of the horses that didn't finish that day were pulled up, as they were when the winner, Red Marauder, was one of only four finishers. It will be more dangerous on Saturday – good going, and with 40 horses going into those first fences the trick will be keep them calm and easy.

Whatever admiration – and affection – Llewellyn has for individual horses, his feelings could never be said to carry a wisp of sentiment. "They are doing something natural to them," he says, "and they do have a quality lifestyle. How many work days to they have a year? Five or six. I'd settle for that." Along, naturally, with at least one more National win.

"I might be considered to be at the veteran stage, but I'm not interested in packing it in. I work for a good boss [the trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies] and things are going along very nicely, thank you. I have a few sponsors – including one for breeches. It's a good life and for me the National is the great bonus, just getting to ride in this race."

But if he elevates the race to almost mythic status, he does not go quite as far as Mick Fitzgerald, who after winning on Rough Quest seven years ago pronounced it better than sex. "Depends who you are doing it with it, I suppose," says Llewellyn. Certainly, for him, it was no better than kissing an ancient aunt three years ago when Senor El Betrutti fell at the first – "if you could ever predict a horse would get round, that was it" – or last year, when of his two stable choices, he picked a loser, Beau, rather than Bindaree, the winner and his mount today.

Two years ago he was separated from Beau but chased after him in a desperate bout of denial that his hopes for another year were over. "I suppose what I did was a bit irrational, but you bring so much to the race, it means so much, and it's hard to accept that your chance has gone. I suppose when I looked back, I have to say the race has been pretty even-handed with me. It's given me good luck and bad, and you can't expect too much more than that."

Yesterday, Llewellyn visited a hospital and talked with young patients, some suffering from cancer. It was a sobering interlude that gave perspective – and brought him down, at least for a while, from the soaring expectations of a race that takes both men and horses so far beyond the borders of real life.

"Racing is hard, and nothing is harder than the National," he says, and then pauses over that question about if anything could be better. Sex, maybe, but you wouldn't want to rush into choosing your partner.