Grand National 2016: How the famous race could decide this year’s trainer’s title

The Grand National could well be the deciding factor for Willie Mullins and Paul Nicholls' title hopes

Trainer Willie Mullins (Getty Images)

After two days of the Aintree Festival, Willie Mullins has taken the lead in the race to be crowned British Champion trainer. Why is this significant? Mullins doesn’t even train in Britain.

With headquarters at County Carlow, Ireland, Mullins looks set to be the first overseas handler to win the trainer’s championship since Vincent O’Brien in 1954.

With the title being decided by prize money earned, an impressive haul at the Cheltenham Festival saw the man from Closutton narrow the gap on long-time leader Paul Nicholls to £246,474. In pursuit of this historic victory, a star-studded and sizable squad accompanied Mullins to Aintree.

These stars certainly provided, with two Grade 1 wins and several places earning the trainer a narrow lead ahead of Saturday’s racing.

It may well be tomorrow’s feature, the Grand National, that decides the championship. It earns the winner a whopping £561,300 and is one of the last races with a purse big enough to significantly alter the title’s outcome.

Trainer Willie Mullins (Getty Images)

Aintree is in fact a festival that Mullins usually avoids, only having 10 runners entered last year. This year, he has more than triple that.

The challenge for the title was practically inadvertent, a testament to the tactical placement and distribution of his horses, who are kept apart in the hope of ensuring maximum success and prize money to remarkable effect.

The fact that Nicholls has had more than four times the amount of runners in Britain as Mullins, simply speaks to the quality of the latter’s horses and their race planning.

Paul Nicholls (Getty Images)

All that firepower lying in one place, thanks to loyal and generous owners, has resulted in considerable dominance. This can delight and irk punters in equal measure, rewarding favourite backers but occasionally, as at Cheltenham, causing last minute defections that can completely transform a race’s market to punters’ cost.

Another consequence is how rare it has become to see the best compete against the best. Annie Power and Faugheen, the two hurdling stars of recent years are unlikely to ever meet on a racecourse but for in the stables.

Both Nicholls and Mullins have won the Grand National once each and make up a quarter of this year’s 40 runners between them. The likeliest winner from the two is Silviniaco Conti (5:15), currently third favourite and once considered the finest long distance chaser around.

Mullins’s best hope, Sir Des Champs, also previously frequented some of the best races in the calendar and if returning from injury has to have a solid chance.

Elsewhere on the card, Squouateur (1:45) can be forgiven a slightly lacklustre Cheltenham run and could prove some value after being overlooked by the owner’s retained jockey.

Some of Willie Mullins’s aforementioned stable stars will be in action, both Yorkhill (2:25) and Douvan (3:00) being very short-priced favourites but deservedly so. The same can be said for Thistlecrack (3:40) trained by Colin Tizzard, who is yet to be troubled in any of his races at the top level this season.

After the Grand National furore has mellowed, one race still remains. Bigmartre (6:10) can go well in this with a valuable 10lbs being claimed by his jockey on just his second handicap start.

See here for a more comprehensive look at every runner for this year’s Grand National.