Is Gordon Elliott's form a cause for concern as the Grand National looms?

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In Monday's email Chris reflects on Gordon Elliott's form ahead of the Grand National – and subscribers can get more great insight, tips and racing chat from Chris every Monday to Friday.

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Trainer form isn't something that gets much of an airing in Grand National week, as a rule. Find the right horse for this extreme test, that's the mission for any punter who is turning their mind to the race, and the animal's wellbeing tends to be taken for granted on the reasonable basis that this has probably been the target all season.

But anyone minded to take the shortening odds about Delta Work or Escaria Ten should at least have a think about the fact that Gordon Elliott's operation is not flying along in the usual way. On Friday morning, Elliott was top of the 'cold trainers' list that appears daily on the Signposts page of the Racing Post because he'd gone 16 days and 59 runners without success, since Delta Work landed the Cross-Country at the Cheltenham Festival.

That losing run stretched to 60 but was then broken at Ayr on Friday by the success of Platinumcard, who finished strongly to go past his main market-rival on the run-in. Still, the floodgates haven't opened; Elliott is 0-11 since that winner, though five of them finished second.

So the score now stands at 1-72 over two and a half weeks. There's no denying that is a low strike-rate for a powerful stable. Elliott would normally be winning in Ireland with around 15 per cent of his runners, improving to better than 20 per cent in Britain.

Who will win the 2022 Grand National based on previous trends?

Is he worried? Definitely not, the County Meath trainer assured the Front Runner at the end of last week.

"To be honest with you, we've had two horses that we fancied since Cheltenham; one horse pulled up lame and the other ran his race, finished second. No, it wouldn't worry me at all.

"Listen, obviously, we're not having winners but you always get a quiet week or two and that's the game we're in. Two weeks is a long way in jump racing."

Fair enough, but Elliott did also have a slightly disappointing Cheltenham, when a slew of big-name, fancied runners failed to find the winner's enclosure, as the Front Runner remembers, having backed quite a few of them. He finished the week with two winners (Commander Of Fleet and Delta Work) from 60 runners, those beaten including Galvin, American Mike, Mount Ida, Run Wild Fred, Andy Dufresne, Fil Dor, Pied Piper, Queens Brook, Riviere D'Etel, Hollow Games and Saint Felicien.

"We hit the crossbar with plenty of horses," Elliott reflects. "We had seven seconds.

"If Farouk D'Alene hadn't fallen at the second-last, he'd have won or been second. Conflated was going to be second in the Ryanair. It was just one of them weeks. Things didn't bounce right for us.

"But look, to be fair, we had two winners. So I can't complain. No one complains about two winners at Cheltenham."

This is certainly a fair point. Elliott had as many winners as Nicky Henderson and Venetia Williams, and Williams was certainly delighted with her week's work. The only trainers who had more winners were Willie Mullins and Henry de Bromhead.

It's tempting to put a line through all of it and just call it a crummy month. We all have them. Winning at the Festival is famously hard, while the racing we've had since then has been low-profile stuff.

But it's worth thinking this over and deciding how worried we are because there must be a distinct possibility that Elliott's disappointing Cheltenham is about to be echoed by a disappointing Aintree. If you're considering a bet on one of his, there's additional risk that needs to be built into the price. Those punters who made his Level Neverending a 1-4 shot yesterday were behaving with a remarkable lack of caution in the circumstances.

Delta Work beat Tiger Roll in a thriller at CheltenhamCredit: Edward Whitaker

We've had similar discussions already this year in relation to Paul Nicholls, Nicky Henderson and Jessica Harrington, learning about each yard in the process.

"Something is not right somewhere," Nicholls said in early February, when issues with a batch of feed were suspected; his charges were soon winning again, though they still haven't reached the high strike-rates from before Christmas.

Henderson's yard went quiet in the fortnight before Cheltenham but he was running his lesser horses in moderate races at the time, marking time before the big days came along. Even so, he admitted: "You do worry a bit," once his barren spell had been broken by a Sandown winner. All doubts were banished when Constitution Hill broke the clock in the Supreme. Henderson's recent strike-rate is 35 per cent.

Harrington's yard was much quieter through the early weeks of the jumps season than we were used to, but she pointed to a change in the balance of her string, away from jumps and towards the Flat. She had a respectable March, from a handful of jumps runners. Now that the turf season is here, she is back among the winners with her Flat racers.

The comfort to be drawn from these other cases is that the flow of winners resumed soon enough. Everyone goes through peaks and troughs and a completely convincing explanation does not always present itself.

But the key question is, will this trough end in time for the Grand National? Anyone hoping to see a couple of reassuring winners from Elliott will have to wait, as there is no jump racing in Ireland in the first half of this week. He won't have a runner before the maiden hurdle that opens Limerick's card on Thursday.

But the first two days of Aintree's meeting should give us some insights. Elliott has Conflated and Zanahiyr among the entries on Thursday, Vina Ardanza, Fury Road and Minella Crooner on Friday.

If a couple of those, or a couple of their stablemates should happen to do the business at the end of the week, the case for Elliott's Grand National runners will be so much more compelling. If the yard continues to damage the woodwork, rather than finding the back of the net, then 8-1 about Delta Work starts to look a bit skinny.

In the context of this race, we could not be discussing a more important trainer, as Elliott may end up with a fifth of the field running for him. As well as Delta Work and Escaria Ten, he has Run Wild Fred, Battleoverdoyen, Mount Ida, Samcro, Farclas and Coko Beach, all high enough in the weights to be guaranteed a run if connections decide to send them. Death Duty will probably also make the cut, though we'll learn more about that when the latest entries are published today.

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The Front Runner is our latest email newsletter available exclusively to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Chris Cook, a four-time Racing Reporter of the Year award winner, provides his take on the day's biggest stories and tips for the upcoming racing every morning from Monday to Friday