When the 34 runners line up for the 2026 Randox Grand National at Aintree on Saturday 11 April, one horse will carry a story unlike any other in the field.
Twig, an 11-year-old bay gelding trained by Ben Pauling, was bought for just £100 approximately five years ago, a throwaway price for what looked like a throwaway horse.
On Saturday afternoon, at 4pm on one of sport’s greatest stages, he will contest the world’s most famous steeplechase with a £500,000 bonus waiting for connections if he can reach the winner’s enclosure first.
It is, by any measure, a remarkable journey.
A Horse Nobody Wanted
Before Twig became the feel-good story of the 2025/26 National Hunt season, he was the horse nobody rated. Bred by Sulamani (IRE) out of Southern Exit (GB), he was “lapped” — finished last and well beaten — in his first two races for his previous owner-breeders. When the Morgan family came calling with a £100 offer, the previous connections had little reason to refuse.
That £100, it turned out, may prove to be the most extraordinary investment in British racing history.
Georgia Morgan, who would become Twig’s owner, bought him for her son Beau to go point-to-pointing on. A young jockey needing experience, a cheap horse needing a purpose: it seemed a modest arrangement at best.
What followed was anything but modest. Twig and Beau Morgan won seven point-to-point races together, forming a partnership that would eventually carry them both to Aintree and the Grand National itself.
A Family Affair
The story of Twig is inseparable from the story of the Morgan family. Georgia Morgan owns the horse. Her son Beau, now a 20-year-old conditional jockey, rides him. Her other son Luca Morgan assists trainer Ben Pauling. It is the kind of wholehearted, all-in family commitment that makes the sport of horse racing worth following.
Beau’s first ride in the Grand National came in April 2025, when he and Twig finished a creditable 10th. Then, in November 2025, they won the Veterans’ Chase at Sandown Park. And then came the race that changed everything.
On 6 December 2025, Twig lined up for the William Hill Becher Handicap Chase at Aintree, run over the same Grand National fences he had navigated so cleanly in the spring.
What unfolded was a race that had those watching through their fingers. Twig and the 9/2 favourite Mr Vango, ridden by Jack Tudor, fought out an epic duel up the run-in, with the outcome settled only by a photo finish and a nerve-racking stewards’ enquiry. Twig prevailed by a short head.
Georgia Morgan missed it all. She was at home with a broken leg, unable to make the trip to Aintree. Her husband Arron was there in her place, watching their son come back to unsaddle on one of the great days in the family’s racing life.
“To see Beau come across the line was emotional,” Arron Morgan said, as reported by Horse & Hound. “I turned away thinking, ‘Is this true?’ I’m so proud of the boys.”
Beau, for his part, was generous in his tribute to the horse that has made his name. “He dug deep today and I owe everything to him,” he said.
The £500,000 Reason to Run
The Becher Chase victory did more than warm hearts. It opened a financial door that trainer Ben Pauling could not ignore.
By winning one of the qualifying races in the William Hill bonus scheme, Twig is now eligible to collect £500,000 should he win the 2026 Grand National. That prize, on top of the race’s already substantial first-place money of £500,000, transformed the planning process entirely.
Pauling admitted that a second tilt at the National was not necessarily his original intention. Twig’s 10th-place finish in 2025, while respectable, had not screamed “future winner”. But the free entry that comes with the Becher victory, and the lure of the £1 million payday, altered the calculation completely.
“He sort of has to have another go at the National now,” Pauling said, as quoted by Racing TV. “It wasn’t necessarily what I was plotting at the start of the season because while he ran well in it last year, he didn’t look like he was ever going to trouble the judge, but he gets a free entry now and there is this £500,000 bonus.”
Crucially, Pauling believes last year’s National may have understated what Twig is capable of over these fences. “Looking back at the National last season, it was Beau’s first ride in the race, we rode him fairly quietly early doors and he didn’t lose any ground, he just wasn’t going to make it up. If he’s ridden a different way maybe he might be competitive.”
The trainer’s admiration for the horse runs deep. “He has kept giving throughout his career,” Pauling has said. “Everyone kept thinking ‘that will be the last time he wins off that mark’ and he just keeps finding another angle.”
The Race Itself: Saturday, 11 April 2026
Twig goes to post as the 34th and final horse in the field, bottom of the weights at 10st 4lb, and available at 50/1 with the bookmakers. The market is dominated by Willie Mullins-trained runners, with I Am Maximus heading the betting at 7/1 alongside stablemate Nick Rockett.
In a race where anything can happen, Twig is more than just a 50/1 outsider. He is proof that a horse bought for £100, with the right people behind him, can line up at Aintree with a real chance.
