Balthazar recovers

Balthazar King was making a pleasing recovery from breaking ribs in a fall at the Canal Turn Crabbie’s Grand National.

The 11-year-old is being treated at the University of Liverpool Equine Hospital after falling on the first circuit in the race, bringing down Ballycasey in the process, an incident that meant runners had to bypass the fence.

Writing on his Facebook page on Monday Hobbs said: “Balthazar King has had a good 24 hours and [is] making steady progress.

“He has broken a couple of ribs and is very sore but is eating and seems bright in himself.”

Oscar’s retirement

Oscar Time was retired after his National run where Sam Waley-Cohen eased him once he had no chance of the placings. His great Aintree record included a second to Ballabriggs in 2011 and a fourth to Aurora’s Encore in 2013 and he won the Becher Chase at the age of 13.

Punters take a hit

AS the man said, it’s not a nicey-nicey game of soldiers. The battle between punters and bookmakers goes on, cheerfully for the most part, but with no quarter asked or given.

Some bookmaker claims are hardly worth a response. Victory for A.P. McCoy and Shutthefrontdoor ‘would have cost the industry up to £75m’ is a pretty good example.

If there had been even the slightest chance of that, he’d have been sent off at around 5/2 or 9/4, not 6/1. Off a mark 11lb higher than his Fairyhouse one, and racing over three-quarters of a mile further, that is hardly surprising. Leaving the hype to one side, he actually had only a very slim chance.

On the big day, the SP overround came to a massive 165%, the highest it has been in recent times and some 12 percentage points higher than in 2014.

A day or two before the National, many horses were bracketed on 33/1 and Hill’s went 40/1 about eventual runner-up Saint Are. Hardly a tipster mentioned him, yet he started at 25/1. The 33/1 chances mostly came in to 25/1 or 20/1 and the 50/1 shots to 33s. There was not one single on-course recorded bet worthy of note concerning Soll but he closed in from early 12/1 to 9/1.

If, instead of nebulous comments to the effect that ‘better prices were available’, the bookmakers’ spokesmen would simply come out and say: ‘Look, think what you want, but this is one day in the year when a veritable army of punters, many of them without much of a clue, wants to have a bet and it’s our chance to maximise profit’, we wouldn’t like it much but there would be a kind of honesty in it. 165%! Think hard about that and ponder which side of the fence you’d rather be.

Moloney has the National key

Various things occurred as the Grand National runners passed the post last Saturday.

Saint Are ran a cracking race in second, having finished third in the Becher Chase and demonstrated his liking for the Aintree fences. Trainer Tom George possibly has a point when he says that shortening the run to the first, and thereby cutting the overall distance by about 150 yards, cost Saint Are because he might have worn down the winner. Then again, Many Clouds was conceding him 17lb, a tremendous achievement.

It wasn’t a great race for tipsters, though a few pundits nominated Alvarado each-way at 50/1 when the weights came out in February.

With no exaggeration, jockey Paul Moloney’s record in the race is simply magnificent. Alvarado was finishing fourth for the second year in succession and his rider had already filled that position on THREE previous occasions as well as coming second and third on State Of Play. It would be a fitting reward if he triumphed next year.