Easy does it as Russell plots repeat

One FOr arTHUr, the first randox Health Grand national winner trained in Scotland for 38 years and only the second from this country, will follow a carbon copy season next year when he tries to become the first back-to-back winner since red rum in 1974.

The eight-year-old will be paraded at Kelso this afternoon but will not take up his Scottish national entry in a fortnight. That was just an insurance policy in case the aintree bid was derailed.

One For arthur was ridden by 24-year-old Derek Fox and owned by Belinda McClung and Deborah Thomson.

They raced the gelding in the name of The Golf Widows, starting the season at Kelso in October before finishing fifth in the Becher Chase at aintree in December and winning Warwick’s Classic Chase in January.

Lucinda russell, who joined Jenny Pitman, Sue Smith and Venetia Williams as women who have trained a Grand national winner, said: ‘We have learned that arthur runs best when he is raced sparingly. ideally, we will just follow the same programme.

‘He will go up in the handicap and things will inevitably be tougher for him. But we also have to hope that he is still improving. i don’t think he is quite Cheltenham Gold Cup standard. The national is the race which we have to target.’

Jaimie Duff, the travel manager for russell’s stable responsible for getting horses to the races, paid an emotional tribute to the stable’s late jockey Campbell Gillies on Saturday.

Duff, who helped lead One For arthur around the paddock, was wearing a pair of Gillies’ socks and a ribbon in the colours of Lie Forrit, the horse on which he enjoyed considerable success.

Gillies was 21 when he died in a swimming pool accident in 2012, a few weeks after enjoying Cheltenham Festival success on russell-trained Brindisi Breeze. Gillies’ sister rita still works at the stable.