More changes to the Grand National? Are you kidding me?

Change for change's sake, that's a dangerous thing to embrace. But I thought I heard it being advocated in a speech made on Wednesday by Nevin Truesdale, the outgoing Jockey Club chief executive, in which he foresaw further unspecified changes to the Grand National.

I found that hard to believe in the wake of April's running, the first since the maximum number of runners was cut to 34. There were a couple of non-runners, so 32 took part, the smallest field for a quarter of a century, and we ended up watching a race shorn of most of its familiar drama.

When was there last a Grand National so short on incident? Maybe in the 19th century, when there was often fewer than 20 runners. Maybe never.