With forty runners the world’s best-known steeplechase, The Grand National is a famously open race. This year, there’s a hot favourite, Cloudy Lane, whose owner Jason Maguire has already won the National four times. The off is at Aintree racecourse at 4.15 this Saturday.

The 1839 race is generally regarded as the first Grand National, though the race was then called “The Grand Liverpool Steeplechase”, only becoming the Grand National in 1847. The race was won by Lottery, ridden by Jem Mason. This was the year that Captain Becher christened his brook, the most famous fence in the race, when he landed in the six foot open ditch and took shelter there as the rest of the field jumped over him.

There are sixteen fences on the Grand National course and all, except the last open ditch and the water jump are taken twice in the four miles and 857 yards of the great race. The unique construction of the Aintree fences – thorn dressed with fir gives them a solidity that will cause any horse making sharp contact with one to stop dead. Not only are most of them taller than ordinary fences – eight of them are five foot – but there is a pronounced drop on the landing side in many cases, and the open ditches are formidably wide.

The great Red Rum is the only horse to have won the National three times, in 1973, 1974 and 1977.

The official website describes this year’s race as the “161st running of the John Smith’s Grand National”. They've paid for their current sponsorship, fair enough, but claiming the whole of the history of the race as well seems a bit much.