The Grand National: Why Britain's most celebrated horse race has become so divisive

New York Times

04-04-2025

It is regarded as one of Britain's most cherished sporting events — a meeting that sits proudly alongside the FA Cup final and tennis' Wimbledon Championships.
The Grand National steeplechase attracts horse-racing devotees and casual viewers on a scale no other event in the sport can match around the world. Contestants race a notoriously difficult four-mile course which sees horse and rider navigate 16 fences to reach the finishing post.
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On Thursday, the opening day of the three-day festival on the outskirts of Liverpool which culminates with the famous race, a horse — Willy De Houelle — died after falling at a hurdle. That fatality, along with the 221 horses who died in British racing (across both flat and jump courses) last year, fuels the argument of the campaigners who want the 186-year-old event to be banned.
For them, the hundreds of millions of pounds staked in bets on the main event is a money-making juggernaut borne of animal exploitation and cruelty.
Safety measures to limit fatality and injury have never been greater — and overall deaths continue to fall — but the moral debate endures. Regardless of the growing hyper-focus on welfare, some of the horses slated to compete will not survive the weekend.
It is a little before 5pm on the first day of the Aintree festival and the penultimate race has just ended in victory for seven-year-old gelding Sans Bruit and his jockey Harry Cobden. An usually warm spring afternoon in England's North West has delighted race goers, but some of the horses who have just galloped for two miles, leaping over 12 fences, have overheated.
They are led from the course to a specialised recovery area, a large sheltered ring complete with huge cooling fans, buckets of water and teams of vets ready to check them over. One of the finishers is bleeding down his back right leg, the result of a suspected burst vein caused by the exertion. It is nothing serious but the colt is triaged and treated at a pace which would put many accident and emergency wards to shame.
His wound bandaged in blue gauze, he is led to the corner of the ring where he slurps from a bucket of water, attended by three soothing stable hands.
Just from this snapshot of day one, there can be little doubting the care and attention the competing thoroughbreds receive. Spectators are able to wait beside the area and watch. It is just one among a host of enhanced safety measures that makes Aintree special, and the wider sport has a renewed focus on welfare.
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In 2023, the start of the showcase Grand National was delayed by 14 minutes after activists walked onto the track beforehand. For a race watched by so many millions, it was a moment that jolted British horse racing to better explain those ways it has been trying to make the sport safer. Since 2000, £56million ($72.8m) has been spent to minimise risk and ensure horses have a better quality of life.
At the time, the group behind the protest, Animal Action, said it was satisfied its high-profile intervention had started a national conversation.
They have refrained from physical protest since and multiple criminal trials are due to take place later this year following the 118 arrests connected to that disruption two years ago.
As a result of the changes made to the Grand National, no horses fell in 2024 for the first time on record and 21 of the 32 horses that raced crossed the finish line with others stopping along the way. To make that possible, the Jockey Club, which owns Aintree among 15 of Britain's most famous racecourses, and the overarching British Horse Racing Authority carried out unprecedented alterations to the course.
Some fences were lowered to make them easier to jump. Now the lowest fence measures 4ft 6in and the highest, The Chair, is 5ft 2in with a 5ft wide ditch in front of it. The number of horses allowed to race in the National was cut from 40 to 34, and the first fence has been moved 60 yards closer to the start to prevent horses building up too much speed before jumping it.
Even the race's start time was moved forward from 5.15pm to 4pm to provide safer ground, something that television executives believe led to 1.4 million fewer people tuning in to watch on British broadcaster ITV last year (6.1m viewers compared to 7.5m in 2023).
Nevertheless, this year's main event is expected to attract an audience of 600million globally.
The safety work is not limited to famous old Aintree and its annual highlight. Risk-reduction efforts continue across all British jump racing, driven by new technology incorporating AI to monitor horses' gait before races and detect clues of health issues. Even the coloured markers on jumps have been changed from orange to white as research into a horse's vision showed it made them easier to see.
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Some Grand National traditionalists feel the changes have diminished the race's allure, but the evolution goes on.
Hurdles have been switched from traditional birch to a padded style, which will soon be compulsory at all British courses, after data modelling suggested a possible 11 per cent fall reduction could follow. The fences' inner frames had already been altered from unyielding timber to a more flexible plastic.
Yet horses still die and not all fans are prepared to consider it an acceptable risk.
Dene Stansall's grandfather was an Aintree bookmaker and he grew up loving the Grand National until a traumatic, life-changing moment.
'My family are from Liverpool and I was a big fan of the Grand National before I saw a horse die in front of me,' he says. 'Overnight, I just switched. I decided I could not support something that results in an animal dying like that.
'The people who watch every year may rethink, too, if they saw a dying horse in unbearable pain with its leg hanging off.'
Stansall has been an anti-racing campaigner for the last 25 years and is now Animal Aid's horse-racing consultant.
'I'm banned from Aintree,' he admits. 'Too many protests.
'Yes, there have been changes to the fences but, ultimately, we don't see them being enough to stop deaths. Since the year 2000, 66 horses have died during the three-day Grand National meeting.
'Our goal is a ban on the Grand National and jump racing in general. I don't think that's a radical aim. If you care about animals, it's the natural ethical position. We should not be putting horses through this.'
In past years, animal-rights protestors would gather outside Aintree to try and persuade racegoers not to attend. Sometimes it would result in heated debate. But protestor numbers have dwindled, and on Thursday none were there to confront the attendees in their suits and colourful dresses as they made their way to and from the course.
'Protests have been changed by heavy policing,' says Stansall. 'There are greater restrictions than ever on us and the conversation has moved more to social media and the internet than outside the venue.'
Stansall says the gruelling Grand National race can exact more than just a physical toll on horses. 'People don't realise how frightened horses get going over those fences,' he says. 'I have been told by jockeys that their horses were terrified.
'Many horses are never the same physically or mentally after running in the Grand National. They can be nervous animals anyway and the trauma of the race can really impact them. You get people who say sport is risky and point to boxing or rugby, but humans choose to take part in them. Horses bred to race don't get a say in it.'
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Overall, the Grand National's 10-year fatality rate has reduced by over a third, according to British Horse Racing. But concerns over the morality of racing are not restricted to the United Kingdom.
In 2019 it became one of the biggest stories in U.S. sport after 34 horses died at Santa Anita racetrack in California in a period of less than a year.
Six years ago, the New York Times reported how racetracks in the U.S. had a particular problem with horses dying. Nearly 10 horses per week on average died at American racetracks in 2018, according to the Jockey Club's Equine Injury Database. At the time, that figure was anywhere from two and a half to five times greater than the fatality rate in Europe and Asia, where rules against performance-enhancing drugs were stricter.
Campaigners called for a ban to all horse racing — chiefly comprised of flat racing in America, where steeplechase is less common.
The scandal also prompted the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) to make rules changes that have made the sport safer. Racing deaths in California subsequently reduced overall by 40 per cent.
But a January 2024 CHRB report revealed the total number of equine racing and training deaths increased again, to 82, in 2023, according to a CHRB report presented last January.
'Any increase is concerning,' CHRB executive director Scott Chaney told The Jockey Club website, Bloodhorse, at the time. 'But also a reminder that our work is not complete.'
Chaney, it added, also wanted the return of stricter restrictions on injections.
For thousands of racegoers on Thursday, the tradition of Aintree makes it something to cherish.
Siblings Chris and Alison Lamb, from Litherland in Merseyside, consider it a beloved annual tradition.
'We started coming to Aintree with our grandfather when we were about 11,' says Chris. 'As a football-mad kid, it was great because we used to have the semi-final of the FA Cup and the Grand National on the same day.
'I've owned shares in a racing horse and seen the wonderful life they have, They are treated like VIPs and get the best of everything.'
Alison agrees. 'We come to all three days and, all in, we spend about £600 on tickets and everything else. People say you could go on an all-inclusive foreign holiday for that but it's very important for us.'
Another two days of excitement await the brother and sister, who would not have it any other way despite their admiration for the horses.
'I'm all for making the fences safer and smaller,' adds Chris. 'Any death is sad but you'll never remove any risk. I've known of horses that broke a leg running around a field.'