IT is desperate to lose any horse, and it hits even harder when it is a horse like Many Clouds.

The risk, the possibility that these things will happen, is generally accepted as being a part of racing, just like the risk of career and life-changing injury to riders is generally accepted by riders as being a part of racing. Everybody knows the risks, but having that knowledge doesn’t mean that it is any easier to deal with these things when they happen.

Many Clouds was a remarkable racehorse. He pushed the boundaries. He confounded many statistics when he won the Grand National in 2015. He was the first horse aged younger than nine to win the race in 13 years. He was also the first horse to carry more than 11st 8lb to victory in the race since Aintree legend Red Rum won the second of his three under 12 stone in 1974.

Also, Many Clouds was the first horse ever to win the Hennessy Gold Cup and the Aintree Grand National in the same season. No horse had ever done that before in the 56 years since the Hennessy was first run.

And he wasn’t trained specifically for the Grand National in 2015. Oliver Sherwood did not conceal Trevor Hemmings’ horse’s light under a bushel for the season, he didn’t race him over hurdles until the weights came out, he didn’t hide his progression from the handicapper.

Many Clouds won the Hennessy and he won the Cotswold Chase and he even had a go in the Gold Cup before he lined up at Aintree. All of which meant that he raced off a handicap mark in the Grand National that was 9lb higher than the mark off which he won the Hennessy. And he still won it.

Confounding

Even after he won the National, the Cloudings gelding continued to confound the statisticians. No National winner since Bindaree had won a steeplechase after he had won the National, and Bindaree won just one race afterwards, the Welsh National, 20 months after he had won the Grand National, after he had dropped back down to a handicap rating that was just 2lb higher than the mark off which he had won at Aintree.

The 2014 National winner Pineau De Re did win again, but he won a hurdle race, a Pertemps Qualifier, off a hurdles rating that was 7lb lower than his National winning mark.

Many Clouds was different. He won a listed chase at Kelso in March last season, then he came out this season and won the listed chase at Aintree in December in which he lost out to Don Poli last season. Then he won his second Cotswold Chase on Saturday.

The sad irony is that he probably put up the best performance of his life on Saturday. In beating Gold Cup favourite Thistlecrack by a head off level weights, he earned a Timeform rating of 169, his highest Timeform rating ever and 3lb higher than the rating he was awarded when he won the National.

He would have been a legitimate Gold Cup contender this year as well as everything else. He was cut down in his prime.