Gavin Cromwell’s William Hill blog: Two good chances in Irish National

Honeysuckle Mares’ Novice Hurdle

Testing conditions should suit both Only By Night and Bioluminescence. They’re in really good form at home, and while it’s shaping up to be quite a hot contest, I think they’ll run with credit and be in the mix.

Both have solid chances and I find it quite hard to separate them, to be honest. As I said, both will handle the soft conditions, and while they need to step up on what they’ve done so far, I expect both to run well.

Irish Grand National

It’s great to have two genuine chances in this year’s Irish National. Yeah Man is an obvious stayer and will love the conditions as he showed in Haydock last time. He’s gone up in the handicap as a result, but we hope he’s still improving and this is the race we’ve had in mind for a while. He’s in good form at home, and we’re hopeful he can be involved.

The trip is a slight question mark for Hartur D’arc. I expect he’ll handle the conditions fine, it’s just whether he’ll stay this far on such testing ground which we’re not fully sure on. I’m very happy with him at home, and if he does stay, he’s definitely got a chance. We’ve targeted this race for him since Naas and while it’s very competitive, he’s exactly where I want him.

You always need a bit of luck in these types of races, but we’ve got two horses with solid chances and we’re looking forward to it.

Grand National

I’m happy with how our three for Aintree are going and everything is moving in the right direction.

It looks like Malina Girl might get in, so to have three runners will be fantastic. She’ll need to improve a fair amount to win, but she’s a really hard mare who won’t mind the make-up of the race and I could see her running a bit better than her odds suggest.

Limerick Lace has come out of Cheltenham really well and she should have a solid each-way chance, while Vanillier is in good order too. I was really happy with his run last time and he jumped much better than he had previously which was really encouraging.

I am Maximus was impressive and he looks a big player, but our lad ran well too and should have left him in a good spot to hopefully run another big race.