If you don’t know by now that all professional sport in this country has been cancelled, then we both admire and fear you. The Grand National, as surely everyone knows, has been one of the events to go.
The much-loved Aintree horse race was due to be run this Saturday April 4th but it is no longer on with the country in lockdown over
However, where there is a will there is a way, especially if there are opportunities to gamble on sport involved, and instead racing has cooked up a Virtual Grand National.
Virtual racing is not a new thing – some of the country best and brightest can be seen following it in betting shops on any day of the week. But it is not generally televised on ITV on a Saturday at 5pm.
(Telegraph Sport columnists Jamie Carragher, Will Greenwood and Michael Vaughan) have picked their winners here
Steve Rogers, head of virtual sports at Inspired, said: “Information about the horses is fed into the software which helps determine the probability of their potential finishing positions based on form and past performance.” The machine has a reasonable record at predicting how the race will turn out – it reckoned Rathvinden would be first and Tiger Roll Second last year, those two finished third and first. The ITV program starts at 5pm on Saturday and is a short and sweet 74 minutes. Nick Luck is the presenter and racing great Richard Pitman is a guest.
Oh, and the bookies say they are giving all the profits to NHS Charities Together.
It is – ITV are obviously not putting this on as a live event, so several people must know the outcome and could win a nice few quid by exploiting that knowledge. This never, ever happens in real horse racing.
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