Do changes to the Grand National fences really make the race safer?

The strange story that jockeys have been asked to ride more slowly in the Grand National on Saturday has not been explained. The demand to make the fences safer has made them more dangerous. If fences are lower, horses can run at them faster. Since their riders want to win, they will urge their horses on; so the authorities are trying, probably vainly, to discourage them.

Similarly, the decision to remove the hard timber may well mean that gaps will be knocked out of jumps on the first circuit. Then the horses on the second circuit will tend to bunch for those gaps, creating a greater risk than would otherwise have been the case. In the whole of the first half of the 20th century, only 11 horses died in the National. That number has now been equalled in a fifth of that time – the last ten years, when ‘safer’ fences have been developed.