BRITAIN’S best jockey looks set to miss the Grand National – because no one will pick him to ride their horse.
Brian Hughes has been unstoppable over jumps this season and has almost 100 more winners than his nearest rival.
Over the past five years he has won more than £7.2million for connections and is all but guaranteed to seal his second Champion Jockey title in three years.
Yet when the eyes of the world go to Aintree next weekend, Hughes will almost certainly be in Bangor-on-Dee.
That’s because Hughes, who races almost exclusively at racecourses in the north, won’t be picked to ride a runner in the big race.
Hughes also missed last month’s Cheltenham Festival because he wasn’t selected by trainers and owners.
His agent Richard Hale told The Mirror Hughes would drop everything to get to Aintree if offered a mount – but that is looks highly unlikely he will with just a week to go.
Hale said: “At Cheltenham we couldn’t get a ride. People have their own jockeys.
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“If they have got good horses, they are not going to change the jockeys. It’s not easy to get on a good one.
“This year’s National is full of Irish-trained horses. Willie Mullins has what, 10 to 12 jockeys riding out for him?
“If he could get on a fancied one, he would be there like a shot.
“It’s the race you want to win as a jockey.”
And it’s not like Hughes is unproven over the Merseyside track.
He won over the National fences on Always Waining in the 2010 Topham Chase.
But perhaps it is just not meant to be in the race itself, with Hughes having fallen four times at the first fence in the National.
That bad luck was added to in 2016 when Vicente, who Hughes fell from, won the Scottish National a week later… with a different jockey onboard.
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