That was a great Grand National. Really. It had everything that you hope a Grand National will have: drama at the fences, a rousing finish, a brilliant winner, an incredible story, and everyone home safe and sound.

It was a high-class Grand National, a top weight rated 165, a bottom weight rated 145, and if you were any lower than that, you simply didn’t get to run. The quality of the race was reflected in the pace, strong throughout, unrelenting, and it in the winning time, 0.12secs/furlong faster than Racing Post par. And 16 horses completed, which was a fair achievement on soft ground. The previous soft-ground Grand National was Numbersixvalverde’s in 2006 (despite the official description of good to soft), when only nine horses completed.

The recovery that Vics Canvas and Robbie Dunne made at Becher’s was quite incredible. It would have put any horse out of the race, it would have put the favourite out of the race, not to mind the 100/1 absolute outsider of the field, 39th of 39, the only horse who was sent off at 100/1. For the pair of them to recover as well as they did, and to arrive there with a live chance at the final fence, so live, in fact, that they traded at 6/4 in-running, was quite extraordinary. Vics Canvas should be even better next year as a 14-year-old.

COOL RIDE

Rule The World and David Mullins made their own recovery too, at the fourth last fence. It wasn’t as dramatic a mistake as Vics Canvas’, but it was a shuddering, momentum-halter, and it was at a crucial stage of the race, just when you want to hold your position and fill your horse up before the run back around to the racecourse proper.

It was a fantastically cool ride from Mullins. Not just the manner in which he stalked, the rhythm in which he had his horse from early. But going to the last with a chance in the most famous horse race in the world, instead of coming wide, giving yourself light at the final fence, he tucked inside, in behind The Last Samuri and Vics Canvas, and jumped the fence in their slipstream.

It was only on the run to the Elbow that Mullins pulled his horse out and asked him for his effort.

You never know where the winning or the losing of a race is for certain, but it may have been that the winning of the race was right there. You would never have thought that David Mullins was only 19, or that he was riding in his first Grand National.

Remarkably, Mullins went out and won the last race too on Ivan Grozny, which gave him two wins for the meeting, the same number as leading rider Paul Townend. And if Petit Mouchoir had beaten Buveur D’Air by a neck in the Top Novices’ Hurdle instead of getting beaten by a neck – and he traded at 1.12 in-running – then 19-year-old David Mullins would have been crowned leading rider at the Aintree Grand National meeting.

It was a great result too for Gigginstown House, seven years after Hear The Echo, three weeks after Don Cossack’s Gold Cup, 12 days after Rogue Angel’s Irish Grand National. It has been some year for Gigginstown, some spring and, as with Don Cossack’s Gold Cup, you could see what it meant to Michael and Eddie O’Leary. As a bonus, it puts Gigginstown House on top of the owners’ list in Britain, just over £115,000 ahead of J.P. McManus with Susannah Ricci £122,000 or so behind in third in another Irish 1-2-3.

It has been a real roller coaster year for Mouse Morris. No victory for any horse in any race will ever even take the first step on the road to compensation for the loss that Mouse suffered when he tragically lost his son last summer.

However, as with Rogue Angel’s Irish National win, the whole racing world celebrated with Mouse and with his son Jamie. “Tiffer’s working over-time for us.”

THE Grand National SPs weren’t bad. An over-round of 149% was comparatively good, a margin of 1.25% per runner. It’s a step up from last year’s aberration that was 165% anyway and it’s better than the 151% of 2014. Actually, it was the second most punter-friendly over-round in the last six years, so that was a big step back in the right direction.

And the late start time of 5.15pm was good. Well it was good for viewership figures if not for Sunday newspaper writers. Viewership figures this year had a peak of 10 million, which compared favourably with the last three years’ figures of, respectively, 8.9 million, 8.6 million and 8.9 million, when it was run at 4.15.

It may not have been just the later start time that did it, there may have been externals at work, but it may have been. The later time allows for a good build up to the big event too, so hopefully it is here to stay.