The Grand National's Safety Changes: Move the First Fence, Not the Horses

The danger was never really the fences

The Grand National’s reputation rests on its obstacles — Becher’s Brook, the Chair, thirty fences over four and a quarter miles. So it is natural to assume that the fatalities the race has suffered were caused by horses meeting big fences.

Who is allowed to broadcast it is settled by statute — see listed events.

The evidence pointed somewhere else: at speed, and at crowding, in the opening half mile.

Forty horses, a long run to the first, a rolling start that encouraged jockeys to be moving fast at the tape, and a field still tightly packed when it met an obstacle. Fallers at the first fences bring down others, and a horse that falls in traffic falls badly.

So Aintree’s changes are almost all aimed at the first thirty seconds of a ten-minute race.

Move the fence toward the start

The first fence was brought 60 yards closer to the start.

That is the single cleverest change in the package. It does not make the fence easier; the fence is identical. It simply gives the field less room to accelerate before meeting it.

A horse jumping at a lower speed has more time to see the obstacle, its jockey has more control, and a mistake is a stumble rather than a fall.

Racing has spent decades trying to slow the charge to the first by asking jockeys to ride sensibly. Asking did not work — a rider who takes it steady loses position, and losing position costs money. So Aintree removed the distance in which the charge happens, which no rider can opt out of.

And take away the run-up entirely

The standing start at the tape replaces the traditional rolling start.

Under a rolling start, the field walks in behind the tape and the starter releases them while they are already moving, which rewards a jockey for arriving at the tape with momentum — and produces the false starts and jostling the race became known for.

From a standing start, everyone begins from stationary. Nobody gains by being early, so nobody tries to be.

Both changes work the same way: they remove the incentive rather than asking people to ignore it. It is the same instinct as rugby’s head injury protocol making the assessment free to the team, and cycling’s 3km rule removing the reason to take risks in a sprint.

Six fewer runners

The field fell from 40 to 34.

Fewer horses means more room, fewer horses per fence at any moment, and fewer bodies on the ground when something goes wrong. It is the least clever change and probably one of the most effective.

It is also the one with a genuine cost. Part of the Grand National’s character is the size of the field — the sheer number of horses, the improbability of picking a winner, the fact that it is the one race a year that people who never watch racing bet on.

Reducing the field makes the race safer and slightly less like itself. Aintree decided that was worth it, which is the kind of trade every sport eventually faces about its most dangerous traditions.

The fences did change, carefully

Not nothing was done to the obstacles.

Fence 11 was lowered by two inches and its landing drop reduced. Drops — where the landing side is lower than the take-off — are what makes an Aintree fence different from an ordinary one, and they are the mechanism behind the falls the race is famous for.

Solid cores were removed so horses can brush through the top rather than being stopped by it. A horse that clips a yielding fence stumbles; a horse that clips a rigid one goes down.

Toe boards were raised in line with normal fences — the ground-level board that helps a horse see where the obstacle begins.

Note the pattern: none of these make the fences smaller in any way a spectator would notice. They change what happens when a horse gets it wrong, which is the only part that was ever killing horses.

Even the start time is a safety measure

The race moved from 5.15pm to 4pm to get better ground.

Ground condition is one of the strongest predictors of injury in jump racing. Firm ground jars; heavy ground exhausts. An hour of an April afternoon can change it materially, and a race run on better ground is a race with fewer tired horses at the twenty-fifth fence.

It is a reminder that most safety work in sport is unglamorous and environmental. The most consequential decisions are frequently about surfaces and schedules, not about rules — as open water swimming’s temperature protocol shows in a very different sport.

Does it work?

That is the honest question, and it cannot be answered by a single running.

Fatalities in jump racing are rare events with high variance. A clear year proves little, and a bad one does not by itself invalidate the changes. Assessing them requires several seasons of data, and the BHA and Aintree have said as much.

What can be said now is that the changes are well-targeted. They address speed, crowding and the consequences of error, which is where the evidence pointed, rather than making cosmetic reductions to the obstacles that give the race its name.

Whether a race of this kind should exist at all is a separate argument, and one the sport does not get to settle by improving the fences. But given that it does, changing the first sixty yards was a better idea than changing Becher’s Brook.