OWNER LAMBASTS HANDICAPPER'S 'IDIOTIC' OPINION

By Graham Potter | Thursday, February 17, 2022

“We don’t believe it is fair or safe to ask him to carry close to top weight at the age of 12. Since we are responsible for the welfare of Tiger Roll, we must protect him from the idiotic opinion of this handicapper. We therefore regret to announce that he will not run in this year’s Aintree Grand National.”

And with that statement, published in The Guardian, Michael O’Leary, owner of Gigginstown House stud, pulled the plug on any hope that Tiger Roll, who won back-to-back Grand National in 2018 and 2019, will tackle the thirty daunting fences again this year.

Covid-19 sidelined the running of the race in 2020 and last year O’Leary also withdrew Tiger Roll from the race after he disagreed vehemently with the way Tiger Roll had been weighted for the 2021 edition of the event.

So, this is a case of history repeating itself.

O’Leary’s statement continued, “Tiger Roll is now 12 years old, He is clearly not as good as he was at eight or nine, and yet the UK handicapper now rates him 2lb higher than his 159 rating in April 2019, when he won both the Boyne Hurdle and the Aintree Grand National.

“This rating is absurd, and unfair on a 12-year-old chaser. It is a pity that the handicapper won’t give Tiger Roll either a fair rating or a fair weight in the Aintree Grand National, where he could at least try to emulate Red Rum’s three wins.

“It’s sadly clear from his ratings that this handicapper doesn’t want Tiger Roll to run in this year’s Grand National, he won’t give him a fair chance and sadly the race will be poorer for his absence."

But, for all of his protestations, O’Leary also knew he was firing blanks in the battle, acknowledging … “the handicapper sets the weights and even if he is manifestly wrong in the case of Tiger Roll, there is nothing we can do about it other than remove him from the race, since we don’t believe it is fair or safe to ask him to carry close to top weight at the age of 12.”

Had Tiger Roll accepted for either last year’s race or this year’s race … and won … he would have upgraded his place in race’s rich history by becoming only the second horse, behind the mighty Red Rum, to win three Grand Nationals.

But that, in terms of the chances of Tiger Roll being able to ever get to those three Grand National wins, appears to be that!

O’Leary has already indicated that Tiger Roll Tiger Roll will head for a race at Cheltenham which will probably be his last taste of race action before heading into retirement in Gigginstown.

It is what it is and, in the end … the weight debate apart … nobody will ever know if the Covid-19 pandemic had not attacked life as we knew it on a global scale and the 2020 Grand National had been run, whether Tiger Roll might have become the first horse to win three Grand Nationals in successive years, even trumping Red Run’s version. He was an entry before the race was abandoned.

For all we know, that might have been Tiger Roll’s biggest miss of all, but O’Leary and the Tiger Roll team can rest assured that his proud record will also stand the test of time.
Afterall, the last horse, apart from Tiger Roll and Red Rum, to post back to back wins was Reynoldstown and that was back in 1935 and 1936.