Raz De Maree raring to go as he attempts to roll back years

When Raz De Maree lines up in Saturday’s Randox Health Grand National he attempts to become the first 13-year-old to win the race since Sergeant Murphy in 1923 and only the third ever.

Sergeant Murphy was a stalwart of the race, completing on each of his six starts. After his second National he was sold as a hunter to an American carpet tycoon for his son, a Cambridge undergraduate.

Stephen Sanford could not control him behind hounds, however, so he was sent back into training. He was ridden by a vet, Tuppy Bennet, a fiercely competitive amateur whose determination to complete the course in 1921 had seen him remount no less than three times to finish fourth. Sergeant Murphy also had the distinction of being the first American-owned winner.

Raz De Maree’s farrier-cumtrainer Gavin Cromwell said: “He’s in great nick. It was always the plan to come straight to Aintree. He’s been trained for the race.”

In two Welsh Nationals, Raz De Maree has been beaten by only one horse – this year’s Gold Cup winner, Native River. He has already run in two Aintree Nationals, finishing eighth in 2014 and unshipping his jockey last year when sidestepping a faller at Becher’s, but neither time was it on the testing ground that he loves.

The one thing Raz De Maree is unlikely to do is lose a shoe on the way to the start. Cromwell, 43, started in racing with the late Dessie Hughes, Raz De Maree’s former trainer, before moving to Newmarket, where he worked for Ben Hanbury and Paul Kelleway, both Flat trainers who had been jump jockeys.

He won a couple of point-topoints but, realising he would not make a jockey, he sought a job that would keep him in racing and yet earn him a reasonable living. He became a farrier working principally for a trainer who had just started, Gordon Elliott. It was not long before Cromwell had shod his first National winner, Silver Birch, in 2007.

“I’ve still got two of his shoes,” said Cromwell. “We were going to put them on a plaque, but we never got around to it so they’re still in a drawer!”

Eventually Cromwell bought his own place, dabbled with buying and selling pointers – which he still does – and stuck in a gallop. He now has 40 horses for the track and employs two farriers to help him cope with Elliott’s numbers.

“My first experience of the Grand National was in 1999 when Bobbyjo won for the Carberrys,” he said.

“I was at school with Paul [Carberry] – you can imagine what that was like. I’ve been a few times since but not, ironically, when Silver Birch won.”

In the Welsh National, Raz De Maree was at the back of the field, almost tailed off, for much of the way. “If he can keep himself in the race, if he has any sort of position going out for the second time, he’ll run a huge race,” Cromwell said. “He’s slow. The more things are slowed down, the more stamina is needed, the better it is for him.”

Although the ground at Aintree is “drying out” according to clerk of the course Andrew Tulloch yesterday, it remains officially “soft”.