Paul Ferguson Reveals Key Trends for Four Aintree Grand National Handicaps

Not once in 11 runnings has a market favourite won the Red Rum Handicap Chase. That counterintuitive finding, drawn from over a decade of historical data, runs against almost every instinct the casual punter brings to Thursday 9 April's opening handicap at Aintree, and it sits at the core of what makes racing expert Paul Ferguson's trend analysis for the Grand National Festival such a useful corrective.

Ferguson has updated his key trend sets across four Aintree handicaps ahead of the meeting, which runs April 9 to 11, 2026. His analysis explicitly excludes Cheltenham Festival handicaps, training his focus on what the Aintree card itself has historically demanded of winners.

The Red Rum data builds a shortlist framework in under two minutes. Nine of the last 11 winners were aged between six and nine. Eight of 11 carried a weight between 10st 5lbs and 11st 1lbs. Ten of those 11 winners held a rating of 132 or higher at the time of their run, identifying this as a race for classily rated, mid-weight chasers operating well outside the market's favoured end. All 11 winners had completed at least four chase starts in the current season before lining up at Aintree, and eight of them returned to the track within 42 days of their previous run. The Red Rum rewards horses that are current and battle-hardened, not freshened up.

One widely cited qualifier is worth discarding: just five of those 11 winners had any prior experience at Aintree at all, and only two had won there before. Course form, the instinctive shortlisting tool for most punters, carries little predictive value in this race specifically, making it one of the cleaner examples of a cargo-cult trend that does more harm than good at the shortlisting stage.

Across the Aintree handicap card more broadly, French-bred horses have won at approximately double the rate their field representation would predict. Trainer tallies for Nicky Henderson, Paul Nicholls, and Alan King each stand at four wins across the festival handicaps, though King's most recent success came in 2013, a detail that softens any automatic case for his runners without eliminating them entirely.

In the hurdle handicaps, horses that contested a Cheltenham Festival race on their previous start carry a notably strong record, with two-thirds of winners also having run in Grade 1 company most recently. The single clearest disqualifier is limited hurdling experience, which has produced poor returns consistently enough to treat as a hard filter.

For the Red Rum, the five-point framework runs: aged six to nine, rated 132 or higher, carrying no more than 11st 1lb, raced within the last six weeks, minimum four chase starts this season. Entries are due imminently. Any runner that clears all five thresholds deserves to sit near the top of the shortlist; most of the rest of the field can be safely set aside before a single price is checked.