Twelve months ago, Tiger Roll flopped over the line to win his first Grand National by a fast-diminishing head. This time, he looked as though he could have jumped round again. There is little about him physically to suggest he might be a horse in a million, but the latest success in an already extraordinary career leaves no room for doubt. Red Rum still reigns as Aintree’s greatest hero, but Tiger Roll is making ground all the time.

Who would bet against him making it three wins next year? Not the punters who sent him off as the 4-1 favourite on Saturday and scarcely suffered a moment’s concern as Tiger Roll and Davy Russell moved serenely through the familiar Aintree mayhem. A couple of slight stumbles on the landing side towards the end of the second circuit were the only obvious sign that Tiger Roll had been in a race at all.

Throughout the second circuit, as the second-favourite Rathvinden made much of the running under Ruby Walsh, the eye was constantly drawn to Tiger Roll and his motionless jockey, stalking and waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Grand National 2019: Tiger Roll wins the big race at Aintree – live! Read more

It was a National with relatively few fallers – though Up For Review, who went at the first, was the first horse for seven years to suffer a fatal injury in the race. The track subsequently announced that it would conduct a review after the death on Saturday made a total of three fatalities at the meeting.

At the second Canal Turn there were still plenty of runners within striking distance of the lead if they had the talent and stamina to make an impression. None could.

Rathvinden had already started to weaken with two to jump as the mare Magic Of Light, a 66-1 chance, emerged as an unlikely challenger to save the bookmakers. She was still alongside Tiger Roll at the last but a slight mistake there robbed her of momentum and the favourite was, in any case, going much the better.

Perhaps mindful of last year’s race, when Tiger Roll tired rapidly in the final strides on much more testing ground, Russell had delayed his challenge until after the last and once he gave Tiger Roll his head, it was only a case of how far. At the line, Tiger Roll was two-and-three-quarter lengths in front of Magic Of Light with Rathvinden another two-and-a-quarter lengths away in third ahead of Walk In The Mill and Anibale Fly.

“He’s a spectacular horse, such an athlete, and he loves to run and jump,” Russell said. “He just enjoys himself so much. He was a bit of a bulldozer when he started chasing but since he started jumping cross-country fences, he’s learned how to use his feet a bit better.

“It was kind of helter-skelter over the first couple of fences. I can’t remember most of it, but it got a bit tight at times. I’ve got a young son [Liam] at home, he’s crazy about Tiger Roll and he thinks it’s so easy now. He’s watched two Grand Nationals in his life and I’ve won both of them on Tiger Roll.”

Tiger Roll’s record in the National is now identical to that of Red Rum when he took the race for the second time in 1974, with two wins from consecutive starts at eight and nine years of age.

He also appears to be still getting better, after no fewer than 34 races over jumps in a career that stretches back to a win in the Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham, for four-year-olds, in 2014.

And yet, according to his owner Michael O’Leary at least, Tiger Roll may be finished with Aintree and the Grand National. One bookie immediately chalked up Tiger Roll at 8-1 to win a third National in 2020 but O’Leary, ever mindful of his horse’s relative lack of stature, has yet to be convinced that it is a fair target given the near-certainty that Tiger Roll would be carrying top weight.

“Someone asked me outside if he would come back for the hat-trick and I said the answer is probably not,” O’Leary said. “He’s not a big horse and he’ll be up another 8lb or 9lb in the weights. He’ll probably be entered, but he will be so heavily weighted.

“Red Rum won it three times. Tiger has won it twice and we’re thrilled to have done it two times and I don’t want to bring him back here with 12 stone.”

Top weight in the National is, in fact, 11st 10lb, just 5lb more than Tiger Roll carried to success on Saturday, and it is possible that O’Leary was making an early attempt to influence the handicapper before next year’s decision on the weights to be carried not just by Tiger Roll but the other horses at the head of the weights.

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Alternatively, O’Leary will indeed run Tiger Roll in the Cross Country Chase at Cheltenham next year and then send him into retirement. “This feels like an out-of-body experience,” he said. “The bizarre thing is, he seemed to win better this year.

He was always in the right place, stumbled a couple of times which woke him up and there was never a moment’s worry.

[But] we have a responsibility now. He’s probably the most famous horse in training. In business you can be greedy but in racing you should not be greedy. It’s a year away and he could get an injury next week. His primary target will be the cross-country and if he won, we’d make a decision after that.”

Gordon Elliott, celebrating his third Grand National success, was just as adamant that the little horse O’Leary only half-jokingly calls a “rat of a thing” has anything left prove. “You talk about legends,” Elliott said. “Red Rum won three Grand Nationals, and Tiger Roll has won two Grand Nationals and four times at the Cheltenham Festival. That’s a legend for me.”