One idea comes to mind when looking at this year's Randox Health Grand National: romance is well and truly dead.

There seem to be less stories like the ones that made me fall in love with the race as a child, each one weaving a hair of magic into the field and revealing that one day, if we're fortunate enough, one of us may stand amongst the sport's giants in the parade ring.

It's unusual the horses you remember. There was Dream Alliance, who was bred for peanuts in a South Wales allotment and conquered pioneering stem cell treatment for his working-class owners, or Ballyholland, the Galway Plate winner called after and followed by a tiny town in Northern Ireland.

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Then there were the Aintree regulars. Whether it was my cherished Black Apalachi, State Of Play or Saint Are, the very same grizzled muzzles would return every year to punch it out up the Elbow. Hello Bud was still winging around the famous spruce fences as a 14-year-old, with a baby-faced Sam Twiston-Davies just a handful of years his senior.

The dreamers among us will be supporting the old-school stayer Mr Vango and his eccentric fitness instructor Sara Bradstock this year, or Oscars Brother and his two-horse Tipperary fitness instructor Connor King, but the race has actually evolved to the point where those horses are the exception instead of the guideline.

Mr Vango could not even secure a run in the race last year despite winning the London National, Peter Marsh and Midlands Grand National previously in the season, while Oscars Brother will run in the silks of JP McManus having actually previously been owned by the unheralded Mak King Racing Syndicate.

While the changes to the race have actually been welcomed to enhance safety, the National is now basically a classy staying chase and tends to be controlled by the exact same highflying trainers and owners. The dream of having an Aintree runner is slipping from the majority of our grasps.

That is particularly the case if you are English, as a horse from these shores hasn't thrived in more than a decade, with Scottish trainer Lucinda Russell the just one to have actually made an effect from Britain because time.

It's a comparable story for female jockeys. Gone are the days when Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh were reserved on horses with legitimate chances and, while Rachael Blackmore shattered the glass ceiling in 2021, it will be a while before we see her like again.

It was hoped the William Hill Half A Mil initiative would invigorate the competitiveness en path to the race by offering a ₤ 500,000 bonus offer to any horse who might win it and one of three acknowledged trials, but just one horse has a possibility of trying the feat.

Becher Chase winner Twig requires 11 horses to come out to be guaranteed a run while Grand Geste, winner of the Grand National Trial at Haydock, would not have a hope in hell of lining up off in a modern-day National off a mark of 134 even if he was gotten in.

The other certifying race, the Classic Chase, wasn't even considered worth restaging when it was lost to bad weather in January, making it even harder for the conventional National types to contend.

The race is merely unrecognisable from the one numerous of us remember, which sadness is compounded when the whole sport seems to be heading in the very same elitist direction.

A French fancy to keep on side

It's that time of year when we can start to anticipate Guineas weekend - Aidan O'Brien definitely is as his Albert Einstein shot to 2,000 Guineas favouritism last week.

The boy of Wootton Bassett hasn't been seen because winning the Marble Hill Stakes over six furlongs last May, and O'Brien hasn't won the race considering that 2019, so I'm not in a rush to back him at 7-2.

It's always an enjoyable challenge attempting to pre-empt the marketplace in races like this and, while there are a wide range of dangers involved, I am eager to keep the French colt Take Me On in my great books at 33-1.

He looked something special when making a winning debut in a ₤ 19,000 maiden at Deauville in October. He at first raced in an unwinded style but perhaps something upset him as he absolutely removed with Mickael Barzalona shortly afterwards, the jockey eventually letting him circle the field and lead.

Despite wasting important energy in the first two-thirds of the mile contest, Take Me On had adequate energy to easily keep a five-length space to his pursuers, consisting of the Andre Fabre-trained Wertheimer-owned preferred Rumoriste.

He recorded a Racing Post Rating of 92, a figure greater than Albert Einstein, Bow Echo, Publish and Gewan achieved on their first start, and hopefully he can take a significant action forward in a trial as he boasts entries in both the Prix Djebel and Prix de Fontainebleau next month.

The last three winners of the 2,000 Guineas all had a current run of sorts, and if Take Me On can reveal a bit more professionalism this time then his chances will definitely topple for Newmarket offered the owner's bloodstock agent, Morten Buskop, suggested he was heading that way in a current interview.

His pedigree isn't that of the typical Newmarket winner as he is by Lope De Vega, but Shadow Of Light ran admirably for that sire when third last year and Take Me On has actually already proved he remains the trip, so there are even worse prospects to take a flyer on.

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