The festival is four days and features many horse that will run in the 2010 Grand National. The festival is too big to cover here in detail, so I will point you in the direction of our sister website Cheltenham Race Festival, give it a visit for all the latest odds, runners and tips.

So what’s covered by the site? As you’d expect they have all the runners listed, along with tips, odds and a brief history of the great race. The site doesn’t go into in depth analysis of each horse, most people just want the horses name and odds! Few can be bothered reading time form and scientifically try to pick a winner, lets face this race is all about having a £5 each way bet, sitting back and having some fun.

Sea The Stars was given a TimeForm rating of 140 after a stunning win in the Irish Champion Stakes, the rating could even improve after a stunning performance in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. The rating puts him up there with legends like Shergar, Dancing Brave and Dubai Millennium.

Any good photos will make it onto my flickr photo profile it’s a mash up of all my photos, including many horse racing ones. The photo in the post was taken during my last visit to Bangor, it’s a great course for photographers to get racing shots on, it’s always fairly quiet and the jumps are well placed to easily accessible parts of the course to the general public.

The two themes to choose from are listed below, ‘Horse Race’ is the theme you are looking at now on the site and ‘Jockey and Horse’ is an alternative theme using a photo of AP McCoy and Ruby Walsh battling it out at Bangor On Dee race course. To preview the themes click on the links below.

Preview Theme (Jockey and Horse ~ Green)

Preview Theme (Horse Race ~ Brown)

To download the themes use the download links provided. Remember to upload them into your wp-content themes folder and then just activate them from the admin area.

Download (Horse Race)

Download (Jockey and Horse)

Carl Llewellyn said of Party Politics: “He was a fantastic jumper of the National fences, and gave me one of the best days of my life.
“It was a real shame that he never got the chance to win back-to-back Grand Nationals, as he was going significantly better at The Chair in the 1993 void National than when he won it in 1992.”

Punters will have to wait until March 2010 for a true picture of the official runners to emerge. Several bookmakers are already giving ante post odds on a number of likely entrants. They include: State Of Play 25/1, Black Apalachi 25/1, Comply Or Die 25/1, Character Building 25/1, Big Fella Thanks 25/1, My Will 25/1, Irish Raptor 33/1, Mon Mome 33/1, Niche Market 33/1, Butler’s Cabin 33/1, Tricky Trickster.

Betfair is giving new customers a free £25 bet, to claim the free cash just follow these steps: Click here to open your account using the promotion code BET234. Once you’ve made a deposit to your account, place a bet up to £25. If your first bet loses, you’ll get your cash back (up to £25) within 24 hours. It’s a great deal for you as you can’t really lose, and if you do lose you get your money back! a ‘Win Win’ situation or rather ‘Lose Win’ situation.

BetFair also offers some of the best odds available online, usually they are 20% better than other bookmakers. BetFair also allows you to bet on losers! The idea is that you don’t just back winners but you also ‘Lay’ losers. For example, if you decide to lay a horse in a race you are, in theory, backing the horse to lose the race. Statistically this makes far more sense, in a six horse race there can only be one winner so the chances of picking a loser are far great than your chances of backing a winner.

Red Rum won his first Grand National in 1973 in his big-race debut, at eight years of age. He won this race by three quarters of a length and the following year he became the first horse since Reynoldstown (1936) to carry a 12 stone weight top victory and score back to back wins. He came second place in the Grand National in the following two years and then won an unprecedented treble at 12 years old – winning by an unheard of 25 lengths!

To put this in some kind of context – in five years Red Rum ran Grand Nationals, clearing 150 fences with never so much as a stumble. This is all pretty spectacular stuff but gets even more so when you realise that Red Rum was sired by a top-class miler (Quorum) out of a so-called ‘mad mare’ (Mared). Red Rum’s name came from the last three letters of the names of his dam and sire, and he was bought for a mere 400 guineas in yearling sales. He went on to fail to win any of his 14 races in the 1969 – 1970 season and was sold as a cast off in the Doncaster sales after suffering from pedalostitis bone disease. Not a good start to life you might say!

Fortunately for Red Rum he was bought by a former taxi-driver Donald ‘Ginger’ McCain; on behalf of Noel Le Mare; with whom he would develop into a living legend. McCain didn’t buy Red Rum in the Doncaster sales due to lack of funds but five years later he bought the gelding for 6,000 guineas. Another catastrophe struck for Red Rum two days later, when he was exercised for the first time on Southport’s sands – much to McCains horror his purchase showed clear signs of lameness! However a miracle occurred on getting him back on the beach – his lameness disappeared and Red Rum benefitted from daily walks in the brine, and never again exhibited lameness, apart from one time after his Grand National win.

Red Rum made magnificent progress under McCain and on the build-up for the 1973 Grand National, he finished third, second and fourth in races – on unfavourable soft ground. The omens were good for Aintree!

After winning the Grand National three times, it was predicted that he would win it a fourth, but on the eve of the race he was found to have a hairline fracture of a small foot bone and could therefore never be put on a racecourse again. Red Rum’s three victories made him a legend, and he travelled the length of the country making public appearances and was so famous that a Japanese-American businessman offered one million dollars to buy him to promote the opening of his restaurants. The offer was rejected, but Red Rum appeared on TV shows, was guest of honour at the switching-on of the Blackpool illuminations and was immortalised at Aintree by a bronze statue. To mark Red Rums 30th birthday a special meeting was staged in his honour at Aintree where he posed for photos and ate birthday cake! Five months later his heart began to fail so McCain and millions of fans had to bid a fond farewell to the most legendary horse ever known.

The video above will guide you through making a bet with a bookmaker, the example is a ‘Win Only’ bet. The ‘Win Only’ bet is the most common type of bet in horse racing. This is when you back a horse to come first (win) in a race. Lets say you bet £10 that the horse ‘Mon Mome’ will win the 2010 Grand National at odds of 100/1. Should ‘Mon Mome’ come first you will get back £1000 from the bookmakers plus your original £10 stake.

Should ‘Mon Mome’ fall, finish second, third or anywhere else but first place then you will lose your £10 stake. Remember you can also bet online with the likes of William Hill and Ladbrokes ~ it’s far less intimating than betting in the high street and you also get free bet deals exclusive to new online customers. Click here for the latest online bookmaker deals.