Grand National Betting / Graham Cunningham / 03 April 2009 / Leave a comment

The wildest eight minutes in British sport takes place at Aintree tomorrow. Forty horses, thirty fences and any number of potential dramas makes John Smith's Grand National day compelling and cruel in equal measure. Racing UK and betmaverick.com analyst Graham Cunningham gives his best angles on the world's greatest steeplechase.

No apologies for focussing my third Aintree blog of the week on the National and the National alone.

The advent of betting exchanges means that if you manage to find the winner the price you receive is highly likely to be higher than the SP. But the ability to back, lay and trade in and out of positions means that the National offers any number of potential angles.

Ruby and Will have all the boxes ticked

In short, My three against the field for the 2009 Grand National are My Will, Snowy Morning and Comply Or Die.

My Will will be a no-no for the stats crew as he's trained by Paul Nicholls, who is 0-40 in the National, and was bred in France. However, trend after so-called strong trend has been broken in big jumps races in recent years and My Will, unlike so many previous Nicholls-trained Aintree hopes, has been preserved with this race in mind and lines up on the back of a cracking performance behind Kauto Star in the Gold.

A sound jumper who stays very well, he is well in on official figures. He also has the peerless Ruby Walsh aboard - which is a massive boost to his chance - and despite the shortish odds he has to be high on any short list.

The price is wrong.....let's hope the horse is right

Every time I look at Snowy Morning's National price on Betfair I wonder whether someone knows more than me.

In short, last year's third is just too big at the current price of [46.0]. Granted, things haven't gone that smoothly for him since last year, but I suspect that deep ground in Ireland has been far less than ideal and, in any case, there was much more sparkle about his latest performance until the holding ground took a toll late on.

Look back at the replay of last year's National and I suspect you will agree that Snowy Morning did extremely well considering he raced a shade more freely than ideal.

I suspect that he will be handled with more patience until past halfway if all goes well with his jumping this time. Clearly, it would be foolish to say that he is bound to go close with so many dangers lurking all over the page.

By the same token, National experience is never a bad thing and anyone who backs Snowy Morning at his current massive price will have a very good chance of trading out for a free bet or a small profit if he hits the same sort of rhythm which saw him run such a blinder 12 months ago.

Comply Or Die has what it takes to defend his crown with honour

And if Snowy Morning is an attractive back to lay proposition, then so is Comply Or Die.

Granted, you have to go all the way back to Red Rum to find a horse who won more than one National, but another gander at the replay of last year's race reveals that David Pipe's gelding rose to the challenge of Aintree like a natural and passed the post like a fresh horse after four-and-a-half-miles which saw most of his rivals blown away by either the fences or the demanding gallop.

The handicapper also has access to a video player and, despite failing to hit the heights in the intervening period, Comply Or Die returns from a much higher mark with most people convinced that the task will be beyond him.

To be frank, I suspect those people might well be right. But Irish Raptor showed just how valuable local knowledge can be in Friday's Topham and Comply Or Die is just too good a horse to dismiss out of hand on the score of weight.

As I file this blog from a deserted Aintree Media Centre at almost 7pm on Friday night he is trading at [23.0] to back on Betfair.

It's a fair bet he will be a great deal shorter with six to jump on Saturday if the return to Liverpool lights his fire in the way it did last year.