Merigo to begin Grand National prep in Becher Chase
Trainers usually do their level best to get a horse into a handicap on the lowest weight possible.
But such is the revival of fortunes in the John Smith’s Grand National that connections do not want to take the chance of relying on a favourable handicap mark that might backfire by not being high enough to make the final field of 40 that will go to post for the big race next April.
Merigo scored a home win in the Scottish Grand National at Ayr last April as the race had not been won by a Scottish-trained runner since Cockle Strand became the last of Ken Oliver’s five winners of the race in 1982.
Now his trainer, Andrew Parker, has Aintree on the drawing board for the nine-year-old, starting with the totesport.com Becher Chase on November 21st.
The Becher, run over three-and-a-quarter miles of the Grand National course, is the premier trial for Aintree’s showpiece event and Parker is keen to give Merigo valuable experience over Aintree’s unique fences. “We are planning to take Merigo to the Becher Chase,” Parker said. “He runs on Saturday at Kelso over hurdles and then we will go to Aintree, all being well.
“He is in fantastic form and if anything he feels better than ever. A lot of that is just confidence - after winning a big race like the Scottish Grand National, even the horse knows he’s done well.
“The Becher Chase is a stepping-stone towards the Grand National in the spring. We need to go up maybe 5lb to 7lb to guarantee ourselves a run in April. The reason for us going for the Becher Chase is that it’s a sighter at those one-off type of fences in a less pressing environment than the Grand National. If he finished third or fourth in the Becher, he might even go up enough to get into the Grand National."
Merigo’s victory at Ayr, when seeing off Gone To Lunch by nine lengths, was a highlight for both Parker and his long-standing owner, Raymond Anderson Green. “It was fantastic at Ayr. We had a bad year last year, weather-wise. We seemed to get hit quite hard by the cold snap in this part of Scotland and the whole season came together in that one race.”
The last Scottish Grand National winner to also win both the Becher Chase and the Grand National was Earth Summit, who at Ayr in 1994, and then added the Grand National and Becher Chase four years later.
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