Grand National gamble: horse backed from 33-1 into 14-1 as the rain comes 🌧️ 🌧️

Mr Big Shot winning at the Aintree Festival

The Aintree Festival gets under way on Thursday and as ever, make sure you follow our free horse racing tips for every day it is on. The big race is of course the Grand National which will be run at 5.15pm on Saturday.

If you needed to look for a stayer for the race in question, you will need to do so even more so now. Rain has already started to fall in the Liverpool area. The ground at Aintree is currently good to soft but by Saturday it could well be heavy. There is 10mm of rain forecast for Friday alone.

Moving on to the big gamble in question, if this horse gets into the race he is a massive player in the mud. He will be able to race off a very low weight but he still needs four runners to be withdrawn to get in.

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5.15 Aintree Saturday – The Grand National

The horse in question is the Emma Lavelle-trained ECLAIR SURF and connections will be praying for the heavens to open. Not only would heavy ground increase this horse’s chances dramatically, but it might also spur on owners of horses who only enjoy decent ground to withdraw their runners so that he can get in.

All of his four wins have come on either soft or heavy, and the eight-year-old relished a first step up to an extreme trip when winning the Classic Handicap Chase at Warwick by 13 lengths in January. He then finished second to Win My Wings in the Eider, a horse who franked that form massively by bolting up in the Scottish Grand National subsequently.

Backed from 33-1 into 14-1, if this fella gets a run it would be no surprise to see him go off favourite. Very strong form, heavy ground, carrying a very low weight, it will be perfectly set up for him.

If you back any of our selections you can watch them live on the free Racing Post app or racingpost.com. Simply log in to one of your bookmaker accounts and click ‘Watch live’ on the racecards.

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