where is the romance in the modern grand national.

​Apropos of nothing at all, I make the following statement: If Crisp had run in any good-ground Grand National of the past 20-years, with or without Richard Pitman’s supposed error of judgement at the Elbow, he would have won, especially since the reduction in race distance, and I include the years Tiger Roll won the race.
Some would categorise the 1973 Grand National, the greatest horse race ever run according to me, and without doubt, according to me, the greatest individual performance by any horse during my lifetime, as a tragedy, given the hero didn’t win. Others would claim the 1973 Grand National epitomises the great historical romance of the race, given the winner was owned by an octogenarian and trained by a used-car salesman.
We have had tragedies in the Grand National before and since, in fact any time a horse loses its life taking part in the race I classify it as a tragic event. We had the Grand National that never was: human incompetence of a level never before seen at a sporting event. We had the mayhem of the evacuation after a bomb threat. We had the pointlessness of losing the race due to covid-insanity.
Occasionally, the Grand National provides farce or comedy as with the pile-up at the fence after Bechers in 1967 that allowed Foinavon to go from the obscure to a horse of legend whose name will live-on in perpetuity. In sanitising the race, even if done with the best of intentions, the race has diminished, even in the eyes of this naïve fool who loves the race beyond every other aspect of life.
Where will we find the romance this year. There might be tragedy; it is beyond the wisdom of any human to be able to control the fates. And there might be a ‘story’, the type journalists can plan for and have partially written even now, six-days before horses and jockeys line-up for the race. You can bet your bottom dollar that Ed Chamberlain has already e-mailed his I.T.V. colleagues to flag-up the likely ‘stories’ of the race. Would Any Second Now be a true story if he should win? Unlucky two-years ago and trained by Ted Walsh, father of Ruby, part of the I.T.V. team. Noble Yeats winning two-years in succession? Lifetime Ambition, his trainer Jesse Harrington being treated for breast cancer? Minella Trump, another winner for the McCains?
In my ignorance, I may have missed a potential journalistic story. And, of course, a last-minute drama might occur that thrusts a lesser-known jockey into the limelight. And, of course, a syndicate-owned-horse might prevail, with the possibility of a road-sweeper, poultry-keeper or retired pensioner providing the ‘human element’. But to all extent and purpose the romance of the Grand National is, if not yet dead, comatose. 
The Grand National is no longer the setting for small-time owner/breeders, the workaday trainer or the journeyman jockey, to become heroes or heroines, even if for one day. We no longer have runners from the U.S., France, Japan or Russia, as in the past. And that is sad. Sad for them, sad for the race and sad for the sport. It is yet another example of elitism inflicting unheralded harm on the sport.
The information now provided is pickpocketed from a book every Grand National enthusiast should have on their bookshelves ‘Go Down To The Beaten’ by the excellent Chris Pitt.
Elsich was described by Chris Pitt, not without good cause, as the worst horse ever to run in the race. The sort of horse that in those days, and we are now in 1946, the first Grand National after the 2nd World War, could be classified as a member of the Society of Lost Causes. He was ridden by an unfashionable, jockey by the name of Bill Balfe, who, though desperate to ride in the race, might have refused the ride if he had known that in a race the previous day the jockey riding Elsich had jumped off him on the flat after jumping only two-fences. Not the type of horse anyone would want running in a Grand National these days, I accept.
Yet journey forward to 1976 and an equally obscure jockey by the name of Keith Barnfield got his opportunity on Ormonde Tudor, a horse that had eleven different trainers in eleven-years of racing. He fell at the first fence. But Barnfield had received his opportunity for a shot at fame.
In 1973 Peter Cullis got his shot at fame on Mill Door, finishing last in the greatest horse race ever run, though he would have finished closer if not brought to a stop by loose horses running amok at the fourth-last.
John Foster, Sam McComb, John Hudson, Buck Jones, Val Jackson, Dai Tegg, Billy Worthington, Simon Burrough and other journeyman jockeys got their once-in-a-lifetime chance at a shot at fame. As did amateurs and adventurers like the grand old Duke of Alburquerque. 
I accept the Grand National must be protected from the ignorance of the baying anti-everything brigade, and lessening the severity of the iconic fences has produced less ‘carnage’ and, more importantly, fewer riderless horses and unlucky stories. But when the conditions of entry, to a great extent, deny all but the top-end of the pyramid from competing, the race is stripped of part of its appeal as a race that ‘stops a nation’. 
I do not yearn for ‘pile-ups’ as in Foinavon’s year or, as in the deep past, when only one or two-horses finished the race. It is sensible that jockeys are no longer allowed to remount. And it is sensible to limit the number of runners to 40 rather than 66 as in 1929. What I do yearn for, though, is for romance to have the same opportunity as tragedy to provide the headline for the race; for the small-time owner, workaday trainer or journeyman jockey to dream. As I dream myself that before I die, I might inherit in one way or another enough money to own a Grand National runner myself.