Grand National lease in 1848. One century later, the Topham family bought the course outright. Later in the century the race was the setting of a thriller by the popular novelist Henry Hawley Smart. For three years during the First World War, while Aintree Racecourse was taken over by the War Office, an alternative race was run at Gatwick Racecourse, a disused course on land now occupied by Gatwick Airport. The first of these races, in 1916, was called the Racecourse Association Steeplechase, and in 1917 and 1918 the race was called the War National Steeplechase. The races at Gatwick are not
Grand National are jumped twice. Horses completing the race cover a distance of , the longest of any National Hunt race in Britain. As part of a review of safety following the 2012 running of the event, from 2013 to 2015 the start was moved forward away from the crowds and grandstands, reducing the race distance by from the historical . The course has one of the longest run-ins from the final fence of any steeplechase, at . The Grand National was designed as a cross-country steeplechase when it was first officially run in 1839. The runners started at a lane on