The Grand National Meeting 2024 starts today, 11th April 2024. It’s one of the biggest race meetings in the world. In 2023 some £150 million was bet on the Grand National itself, with £500 million bet across the whole of the three-day meeting (Thursday, Friday and Saturday). We love horses and we have no agenda to stop horse racing; we just feel it should be possible to do it without so many injuries and fatalities.
In 2013, Dr Jane Williams and I, together with one of Jane’s students, plus Dr Tim Parkin and Dr Hayley Randle, published a paper entitled: ‘The Grand National: a review of factors associated with non-completion and horse-falls, 1990 to 2012’ in the journal of Comparative Exercise Physiology.
In this paper we identified:
- The probability of a horse falling in the race was 1 in 4.
- The first fence, Becher’s Brook, and drop fences increased the risk of falling compared to plain fences.
- Good-soft going increased the number of horses that completed the race, and reduced the number of fallers, suggesting this is the optimal ground condition for the race.
- Races run at a faster than average speed increased the risk of horses not completing and falling.
- Inexperienced horses and jockeys show a greater risk of not completing and falling.
Unfortunately, when we look at the deaths of horses associated with the Grand National meeting as a whole, since 2000 there have been 63 horses deaths, 16 of these during the Grand National itself. And, sadly, there isn’t really any evidence that the number of horse deaths are declining. There was a period from 2013 to 2018 inclusive when there were no Grand National deaths and two years (2014 and 2017) with no deaths during the whole of the three-day meeting. But during the past four runnings (taken place over the last five years since there was no meeting in 2020 due to COVID), between 2 and 4 horses have died each year at the Grand National meeting, and at least one horse has died in each running of the Grand National.
Data on horse deaths: https://www.animalaid.org.uk/the-issues/our-campaigns/horse-racing/ban-the-grand-national/the-grand-national-meetings-horse-deaths/
Williams, J. M., Marlin, D., Langley, N., Parkin, T., & Randle, H. (2013). The Grand National: a review of factors associated with non-completion and horse-falls, 1990 to 2012. Comparative Exercise Physiology, 9(3-4), 131-146. https://doi.org/10.3920/CEP13013
FURTHER READING:
