There was a point, not so long ago, when Gerri Colombe looked like one of the best young chasers in training.
He won nine of his first ten starts under rules. He beat Envoi Allen in a Grade One at Down Royal. He went to the 2024 Cheltenham Gold Cup as second favourite and ran Galopin Des Champs to three and a half lengths.
He then won the Grade One Aintree Bowl that April. The future looked bright.
Then came a difficult chapter. A season disrupted by injury. A pulled-up run at Leopardstown that raised questions. Two years without a win. And a sense that he had slipped out of that top bracket.
The Down Royal run on St Patrick’s Day changed the conversation.
A Win That Changed Everything
Gordon Elliott saddled Gerri Colombe in the Bluegrass Cube Chase at Down Royal on March 17th, three weeks out from the Grand National, and the ten-year-old cruised to a five-length victory under Jack Kennedy.
He travelled prominently, went clear approaching the last, and came home without ever being asked a serious question. The winning margin flattered nobody.
It was a smooth, controlled performance, all the more so given he held off the 2025 Grand National winner Nick Rockett, who finished third.
Elliott’s post-race assessment was measured but telling. “Jack said he was enjoying himself on the ground, but that he didn’t do a stroke when he got to the front,” the trainer said.
A Career Built on the Big Occasion
To understand why Gerri Colombe is worth taking seriously at Aintree, you have to go back to the beginning.
Bred in France, trained in Longwood by Elliott and owned by Brian Acheson’s Robcour operation, he arrived on the scene with an obvious physical presence and a jumping style that suggested he would keep getting better as the fences got bigger.
He won his first two bumpers, his first two hurdles, and his first three starts over fences without defeat. By the time he arrived at the 2023 Cheltenham Festival for the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase, he was 5/4 favourite.
He lost by a short head to The Real Whacker in a finish that left observers debating for weeks whether the verdict might have gone the other way with a slightly different ride.
A lesser horse might have taken that defeat badly. Gerri Colombe did not. Three weeks later at Aintree, with Davy Russell stepping in for the injured Jack Kennedy, he won the Mildmay Novices’ Chase by seven and a half lengths.
Russell, who had come out of retirement to fill in, saluted the crowd as they crossed the line. It was an emphatic statement.
The Gold Cup run in March 2024 confirmed everything that had been anticipated. Sent off at 13/2 in a race dominated by the brilliant Galopin Des Champs, Gerri Colombe ran all the way to the line and finished three and a half lengths clear of the field behind the winner.
No ordinary horse gets that close to a back-to-back Cheltenham Gold Cup winner.
The Difficult Seasons in Between
What followed was harder. A setback in the winter of 2024/25 ruled him out for the remainder of that season, and Elliott was candid about it at the time.
“It’s not career ending or especially serious,” the trainer said, “but it’s come at the wrong time of the season.” The Gold Cup would go ahead without him.
When he returned to Down Royal in November 2024, he finished third behind Envoi Allen, the first time in his career he had fallen outside the first two.
Then came the pulled-up run at Leopardstown at Christmas. For a horse who had spent his whole career making the frame, it was unsettling form.
This season told a similarly inconsistent story until February. Third at Gowran Park in January. Then second in the Bobbyjo Chase at Fairyhouse, running well to chase home Grangeclare West on heavy ground, leading before the last before being worn down on the run-in.
There were signs that the engine was firing again, even if the results were not quite there.
The Down Royal win was the confirmation.
Does He Fit the Grand National Winner’s Profile?
The stats from the past two decades offer a complicated verdict. On age, ten is on the outer edge of the ideal window, which runs sweetest from eight to ten.
Winners at ten are not unheard of, but the pattern suggests a horse needs to have everything going in his favour at that age.
The weight of 11st 10lb is the real concern. The majority of Grand National winners over the past twenty years have carried between 10st 10lb and 11st 6lb.
Gerri Colombe sits above that range, and weight in the National counts for more than in almost any other race on the calendar.
It is not a disqualifying factor, but it is a genuine consideration, and the market will have priced it in.
Where he scores well is on form. He finished in the top two at Fairyhouse last month, well within the ideal window of thirty to fifty-five days before the race. He has won over three miles, repeatedly, at the highest level.
He is Irish-trained, which in the modern National era is about as strong a pointer as you can find. Six of the last seven winners have come from Ireland, and Elliott knows exactly what it takes to get a horse fit and ready for Aintree.
He has no previous Grand National experience, which is not unusual. Only seven of the last thirty-three winners had run in the race before, so the absence of a previous National run is far from a barrier.
The National Awaits
Gerri Colombe is a different proposition in the National than most of the horses around him in the market. He is a genuine Gold Cup-level performer.
He stays three miles and beyond with ease. He has class, experience of racing at the very top level, and arrives in winning form.
The weight gives reason for pause. So does his age. But the Grand National has a long history of throwing up horses who looked past their best and then produced something remarkable on the day.
Gerri Colombe has the form to compete, the class to mix it with the best, and a trainer who rarely sends a horse to Aintree without believing it has a genuine chance.
At 22/1, down from 33/1, there is an each-way case worth considering. This is a horse with a story to tell, and Aintree in April might just be the place he finishes it.
BETFRED
