The 2024 Scottish Grand National was run, on soft going, on April 20, but testing though underfoot conditions were, they apparently weren’t testing enough for the 4/1 favourite, Mr. Vango. According to his trainer, Sara Bradstock, the eight-year-old – who was eventually pulled up after making much of the runner – would have preferred the ground slower still.
With the British National Hunt Trainers’ Championship firmly in his sights after winning the Grand National with I Am Maximus the previous weekend, Willie Mullins took the unusual step of entering six of the 26 runners. Four of them finished first, fourth, fifth and sixth, netting the Closuttom maestro £131,120, as he sought to become the first Irish-based trainer since Vincent O’Brien, in 1953/54, to win the trainers’ title on the other side of the Irish Sea.
The other two Mullins-trained runners made it no further than the first fence, Mr. Incredible pulling himself beforehand and We’llhavewon making a mistake and unseating rider at the obstacle. leading home his quartet of finishers, though, came Macdermott, who had been ante-post favourite for the Scottish Grand National at one point, but drifted out to 18/1 at the ‘off’.
Ridden by Danny Mullins, the nephew of the trainer, Macdermott took the lead when the aforementioned Mr. Vango capitulated after the fourth-last fence and thereafter duelled with the eventual runner-up, Surrey Quest, trained by Toby Lawes and ridden by Kevin Brogan, all the way to the finish line. Macdermott won on the nod by the minimum margin, a nose, with Git Maker third and another Mullins-trained runner, Klarc Kent, fourth. He thus became the first six-year-old to win the Scottish Grand National since subsequent Welsh Grand National and Grand National winner Earth Summit, trained by Nigel Twiston-Davies, hacked up by 14 lengths in 1994.