Aintree's Randox Grand National Festival gets under way and the going is Good to Soft on all courses – Mildmay, Hurdle and Grand National.
Sulekha Varma, Clerk of the Course, said: “The team have done a superb job. It’s been a really challenging couple of weeks with the weather - we had a spell of hot weather, and now we’re all well rugged-up.
“It’s pretty chilly now and windy today. We’ve had rain promised and not arriving, so it’s been a real challenge for the team, but they’ve stepped up and I think what we’ve got now is perfect.
“We’re Good to Soft on all three courses to start racing today. We’ve been watering for the past three days and we also did a bit of watering when it was hot last week. We’ll see where we are by the end of today. We are forecast some rain tonight, so it may be that we can sit back and let nature take its course this evening.”
Varma took up her role as Aintree’s Clerk of the Course at the beginning of 2020 but has had to wait more than a year to oversee her first Randox Grand National Festival after COVID-19 cancelled last year’s event.
She said: “I’m dying to get going now. I’m glad today’s finally arrived and I’ll be even happier when Saturday gets here.
“It’s been a long build-up, but for me the cloud had a silver lining in that it gave me more time to get my feet under the table, as such, and get to know the team and settle in. We had the challenges of COVID and so on and I actually think it has brought the team together more as a unit.”