Something has been nagging at anyone who has spent the past few months working through the form of Grand National contenders. Horse after horse carries a preparation run that looks terrible on paper. Pulled ups. Last of six. Distant fifths on ground described as heavy. Trainer quotes about the going being all wrong.
It is easy to dismiss each case individually, to file it under “had a bad day” and move on. But when you step back and look at the whole picture, a pattern emerges that is hard to ignore.
This has not been a normal winter. And it has not produced normal form.
Hidden Trend – One of the Wettest Winters Since Records Began
The numbers from the Met Office tell you everything you need to know. Winter 2025/26 was England's eighth wettest since records began in 1836. Southern England recorded its fourth wettest winter, its worst in over a decade.
The West Midlands, Cornwall, and Leicestershire all recorded their wettest winter on record. England as a whole finished the season with 42% more rainfall than its long-term average.
The research station at Invergowrie in Scotland reported its second wettest winter since records began there in 1954. January alone brought rainfall at 201% of the long-term average. February came in at 220%.
The rain did not arrive in dramatic deluges that drain away quickly. It fell slowly, steadily, week after week, saturating ground that had nowhere left to drain.
Ireland was no different. Limerick was forced to cancel a fixture in January after 12mm of rain overnight landed on top of 84mm that had already fallen in the preceding fortnight. Fairyhouse followed in February, waterlogged and unfit.
Clonmel's chase course was rendered unraceable. The interruptions were not isolated incidents; they were symptoms of a season in which the ground across the National Hunt heartlands was rarely anything other than heavy or unraceable from December through to March.
What Bottomless Ground Does to a Horse's Form
There is a particular type of horse that wins the Grand National. The most common winner profile is a horse who is versatile, capable on a range of going, with the stamina to stay four miles and the jumping technique to handle Aintree's unique obstacles.
Many of those horses, precisely because they are good jumpers with efficient actions, do not enjoy bottomless ground. It does not suit them, and when you force them to run in it, the form they show is not a fair reflection of what they can actually do.
Look down the list of 2026 Grand National entries, and you will find this winter's fingerprints everywhere. Horses pulled up at the Thyestes on heavy ground. Horses sent back over hurdles when trainers could not find a suitable chasing opportunity on acceptable going. Horses who ran perfectly respectable races in November on good ground, then found themselves with nothing to run in when December, January, and February turned the whole calendar into a lottery.
The Grand National field this year contains more horses with a single black mark on their recent form than you would normally expect, and in most cases the explanation is the same: the ground was simply unraceable for them.
The Cheltenham Factor
The Cheltenham Festival, which most Grand National trainers use as their primary staging post in the weeks before Aintree, arrived this year after months of relentless rain.
In mid-February, with a fortnight to go, the track was already described as soft. The ground eventually came up quicker than expected by race week, and that created its own problems.
Willie Mullins, whose horses dominate the Grand National field this year, withdrew Fact to File from the Ryanair Chase on day three, telling ITV that the ground was too firm for a horse of his quality. “These horses are too difficult to acquire and when you have them you mind them,” Mullins said. He added: “If the ground is going to be like this, we're not going to bring them.” The winter had softened ground to extremes. A brief dry spell around Cheltenham hardened it. Neither condition was normal, or predictable, and trainers were navigating in the dark.
Reading the Form With Fresh Eyes
All of which creates an unusual challenge for anyone assessing the 2026 Grand National field.
The standard approach, working through each horse's last three or four runs and drawing conclusions about current form, risks penalising horses for a winter that was abnormal by any measure.
A pulled up in the Thyestes on heavy ground is not necessarily evidence that a horse is out of form. A poor run on a waterlogged course in January might tell you nothing useful about how that horse will perform on the typically Good to Soft ground that prevails at Aintree in April.
The more useful question is not what a horse did this winter, but what it did the last time conditions were remotely normal.
For several horses in the field, that means going back to November 2025 or even to the spring of last year to find runs on ground that was genuinely representative. Form hunters who are only looking at the past 60 days are going to draw some very wrong conclusions.
What It Means on the Day
The course management team at Aintree is experienced enough to avoid the extremes that have caused so much disruption elsewhere this winter.
In years gone by, if the ground looked like turning firm, the course would water heavily to protect it. In recent seasons, Good to Soft has become the predictable norm on Grand National day, with heavy ground declared only three times in the last ten runnings and even then usually only in places.
That means many of the horses who spent this winter grinding through bottomless mud are about to find conditions considerably more sympathetic than anything they have encountered since November.
For a certain type of horse, the well-schooled jumper with a clean action who does not want to be pulling its feet out of the ground all the way round, the switch to manageable spring going could be the difference between a form reversal and a performance that looks like it came from nowhere.
The Horse That Appears on April 11 May Look Nothing Like the Form Book
The wet winters come and go, but the 2025/26 season has been something different.
Counties recorded their wettest winter since 1836. Courses cancelled week after week. Horses were unable to get a preparation run at all, or sent out in conditions their trainers knew were wrong simply to keep them ticking over.
The form book for this year's Grand National field is less reliable than usual. That is not an excuse or a disclaimer. It is a fact, backed by the kind of meteorological data that the Met Office publishes once in a generation.
When you are working out who you think can win on April 11, give those recent disappointments a second reading. Some horses ran badly because they were out of form. Others ran badly because the ground was unlike anything they will face at Aintree.
Grand National 2026 is shaping up to be a race where the form book misleads more than it guides. The key trend most punters are missing is simple: this winter has made good horses look ordinary. On better ground at Aintree, a few of them are about to show what they can really do.
