Nick Mordin's System

I'm not the only anorak when it comes to the National - in fact there are plenty out there; the most successful of whom is probably Nick Mordin. He also applies a system to find the winner of the big race each year, using many of the trends highlighted in my annual bulletin.

Nick Mordin claims to have a success rate of 9 winners in the past 11 years, although this is somewhat disingenuous in that 100/1 winner Mon Mome and 33/1 winner Silver Birch both appeared on a 'shortlist' of nine - and neither of them were included in his personal recommendations.

Nevertheless, it is useful to compare his shortlist selections against mine as this will help you to narrow the field further. This year he has included the following seven horses as the top scorers (three on his list are non runners):

Arbor Supreme

Snowy Morning

Character Building (dismissed by me due to lack of season runs and poor season form)

Flintoff (dismissed by me due to lack of season runs and poor season form)

Dream Alliance (ticks all the right boxes, but just too much weight for me at 11st 3lbs)

King John's Castle (dismissed by me due to no win over three miles and poor season form)

The Package (dismissed for being too young at 7 years old)

Therefore the only two horses that qualify on both of our lists this year are Arbor Supreme and Snowy Morning... Now of course it depends on whose judgement you trust and it's not an exact science - but I would say that these two both have to be strong contenders.