Michelle Mone’s Monbeg Genius withdrawn from Grand National

The prospect of an unwanted sideshow at next month’s Grand National ended on Tuesday when Monbeg Genius, the horse owned by Doug Barrowman and Michelle Mone, was taken out of the race at the latest declaration stage.

Monbeg Genius was reportedly bought by Mone for £80,000 as a second wedding present for her husband in November 2020 and is officially owned by Barrowman Racing Ltd. The couple have been the subject of intense media scrutiny, and more recently an investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA), over their links to the company PPE Medpro. The firm was awarded government contracts worth £202m during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the government has initiated proceedings to recover £122m, plus costs, after some of the equipment is said to have fallen below the expected standard.

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The couple strongly deny any wrongdoing, with Barrowman stating that “Michelle and I are being hung out to dry to distract attention from government incompetence in how it handled PPE procurement at [a] time of national emergency.”

Monbeg Genius was among the favourites for the National when the weights were published in February, having run a fine early trial for Aintree when finishing a 10-length third in the valuable Coral Gold Cup Handicap Chase at Newbury in early December. However, he ran poorly in two subsequent starts at Kelso and then at the Cheltenham Festival earlier this month, and had drifted to around 40-1 before being taken out of the race on Tuesday morning.

The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) investigated whether Monbeg Genius was eligible to race before his run at Kelso on 2 March, after it emerged that £75m of the Barrowmans’ assets had been “frozen or restrained” by a court order obtained by the Crown Prosecution Service. However, it was later established that the eight-year-old gelding was not among the assets listed in the court order.

Tuesday’s “forfeit” stage is the last before the five-day declarations for the National on 8 April. Monbeg Genius was among 17 horses taken out of the race, along with Hewick, the King George winner at Kempton on Boxing Day and the original top weight.

This year’s National, on 13 April, will have a maximum field of 34 for the first time, down from the previous limit of 40. Just six of the horses currently guaranteed a run are trained in Britain, while the leading Irish trainers, Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott, both have 10 entries in the top 34.

Corach Rambler, successful last year, is the 5-1 favourite to give Lucinda Russell a third Grand National win in the last seven runnings of the race.