Michelle Mone’s Monbeg Genius still on track to line up at Grand National

Monbeg Genius, the horse owned by the couple at the heart of the PPE scandal, the Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman, remains on course to line up as one of the favourites for the Grand National at Aintree on 13 April.

Speaking at a lunch in Liverpool on Tuesday to reveal the weights allotted each runner in the world’s most famous race, the horse’s trainer, Jonjo O’Neill, said Monbeg Genius, joint third-favourite at 16-1 with William Hill for racing’s biggest betting event of the year, will have his Aintree prep run at Kelso early next month.

Related: Michelle Mone winning the Grand National is a result racing will fear | Talking Horses

O’Neill reported the gelding to be over the minor issues he has had since he was last seen on the track in December when he ran well to be third in the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury. “Monbeg Genius did a good piece of work this morning and I’m delighted with him,” said the trainer.

Whether Mone – who bought the horse for £80,000 in 2020 reportedly as a wedding gift to her husband – or Barrowman will be at Aintree to see the horse run remains to be seen. The reception of a traditionally boisterous crowd of more than 70,000 to a victory for a horse with such connections could well be negative.

The Racing Post ran a column on Tuesday with the headline “Let’s just hope he doesn’t win”, arguing that a victory for Monbeg Genius “has the potential to cause significant damage to racing”.

O’Neill said he wouldn’t comment on anything concerning the owners of the horse. He said he had “no opinion” on the Post article stating: “I am getting on with my job and I will train the horse to the best of my ability.”

The British Horseracing Authority announced a fortnight ago that the eight-year-old, officially owned by Barrowman Racing Ltd and who has always been regarded as a likely type for the Aintree marathon, is not affected by a restraint order placed on the assets of his owners.

Baroness Mone and Barrowman are facing a long-running National Crime Agency investigation into allegations of bribery and fraud in their securing of £200m in government contracts for a company, PPE Medpro. Both now admit involvement in the company, but deny any wrongdoing.

Monbeg Genius is one of the lighter-weighted participants in the Aintree spectacle having been set to carry 10st 4lb.

The continued Irish domination of jumps racing is again clearly reflected by the fact that Ireland has a total of 56 of the 87 horses left in the National running. The final field has been reduced to 34 from 40, one of a number of safety measures introduced by Aintree after last year’s running, and between them the champion Irish trainer Willie Mullins with nine and Gordon Elliott with eight have half of the top 34 currently left in the race.

Doncaster 
1.30 Leader In The Park 2.05 Jazz King 2.35 Johnson’s Blue 3.05 Event Of Sivola 3.40 Williethebuilder 4.15 Pilgrims King 4.50 Off To Alabama

Ludlow 
1.55 Gentleman Jacques 2.25 Malaita 2.55 Thankyourluckystar 3.30 Post Chaise 4.05 Monks Meadow 4.40 Famoso 5.15 Canty Bay

Kempton Park 
5.00 Repartee 5.30 Monterosa 6.00 Uzincso (nb) 6.30 Cephalus 7.00 Notable Speech 7.30 Moonlit Cloud 8.00 Largo Bay 8.30 Natacata (nap)

Elliott has 23 entered and his comments on Tuesday indicated that he has plans to run at least nine. Asked which one of his runners stood out he said: “Galvin looks as if he could be well handicapped. He was nearly top weight last year and he’s the one who could be there.

“Chemical Energy is another. We’ve been keeping him for a bit of spring ground so this has been the plan all year.”

Mullins has 13 from his yard in the race in total. He is already planning to take more than 70 horses to the Cheltenham Festival in March and asked if he will be sending some of his potential Aintree runners to the Cotswolds he said: “We very possibly will. Once we get a look at the weights in more detail then we’ll be firming up plans for the National.”

Irish runner Hewick heads the weights on 11st 12lb and Lucinda Russell said the weight of 11st 2lb allotted last year’s ready winner Corach Rambler was “in line with our expectations”.

She added: “We’re sort of prepping him for the National but the Cheltenham Gold Cup comes first. He’s doing plenty of work at the moment and then we’ll back off with a couple of weeks left.”

British Horseracing Authority handicapper Martin Greenwood, who frames the weight, expects the home runners to be in single-figures. He said: “If the top 34 stood their ground, there would be seven UK runners. I reckon the cut-off will be about 144, even with a slightly small field. There’s every chance the [runners] will be single figures from the UK this year.”

Meanwhile, Aintree believe they are better prepared to deal with any protests that may occur this year, after the 2023 race was delayed by around 15 minutes.

Aintree’s clerk of the course, Sulekha Varma, said: “We’re lucky that we’ve got a very good relationship with the police and we will take guidance from them. We learned a lot last year, and we saw that at Epsom, so we are going into this year with a different outlook.”