October set the tone, but November is when the season properly gets going. The Festival meetings start arriving thick and fast, the big handicaps carry real prize money, and for the first time this autumn, the top end of the market and the Grand National picture start to pull in slightly different directions. Grand National day 2027 is still five months away on Saturday 10 April, but the horses who’ll be there are mostly already working towards it. Here’s why that split matters. November’s headline chases, Haydock’s Betfair Chase chief among them, are really about finding next March’s Cheltenham Gold Cup horse. That’s a different population to the Grand National field, even if there’s some overlap at the edges. The […]