Scottish Grand National

We delivered the goods in terrific fashion in the Grand National earlier this month, and the final of the Nationals comes this weekend as we head to Ayr for the Scottish National.

For those wanting to jump straight in, our tips are as follows:

Arpege Dalene 12/1 e/w

Missed Approach 18/1 e/w

Seldom Inn 22/1 e/w

Trustan Times 16/1 e/w

We'll take a similar approach and look at some of the key trends. The first could be easily misunderstood - and many other tipsters are doing this in our view.

Weight

Most winners of the Scottish National have carried 10-7 or less - 12 of the past winners matched this criteria, but to take it as face value would be to miss an important fact.

While its true, 317 of the 469 runners in that time have fitted that criteria (68% of runners) so its hardly surprising that some of them win.

When digging a little deeper, we actually find the reverse is true, and it is the top weight horses who are over achieving what is expected of them. Of 64 runners who carried 11-1 or heavier, 15 placed - 19% of placed horses in fact from just 13% of runners entered. With 6 winners, they also provided 30% of winners in that time.

We're looking for a horse carrying a decent weight.

Last Run

Moving onto their last run, backing horses over the past 20 years who have finished 1st-3rd in their last run would have yielded a healthy ROI, with 13 winners and 40 places from 186 runners. It's a similar story on horses who finished 4th-6th last time out, but the trend is not as strong.

It's clear that recent form is a key indicator in this event and we'll exclude any horses who finished outside the top 6 in their last run as a result.

Experience

There is a strong trend which points to horses with some experience in chasers - backing the 141 horses with 6-10 previous races would have yielded a 60pt profit versus SP over the past 20 years - quite a stat really.

.

#HorseRacing