Treadwell To Ride Nozic In National

In a bid to repeat last year’s historic Grand National win, Liam Treadwell who rode 100-1 Mon Mome to victory, has agreed to ride long shot Nozic for Paul Nicholls on April 10th.

The french nine year old Nozic, has only raced twice in the last year, having finished ninth in the Welsh National at Chepstow over Christmas. He has since been sold in a private deal to Coral Racing Ltd and will run in the National for ten winners of various competitions being run by the bookmaker and The Sun newspaper.

According to Paul Nicholls who confirmed the ride on Thursday: “The Sun and Coral were keen to have Liam Treadwell ride their horse at Aintree, so I booked him on Wednesday night.”

In an interesting horse racing twist, Coral spokesman David Stevens said: “We’ve bought Nozic as a promotion exercise and there will be ten shareholders by the time he runs in the race, five as winners of competitions run by Coral, with the other five shares going to The Sun. We all saw what happened to Liam 12 months ago, and we thought it would be great to give him the chance of pulling off another miracle result. Nozic is by no means a no-hoper and I’m sure Paul will ensure the ten owners enjoy a good time.”

Despite his unprecedented success on Mon Mome last year, Venetia Williams had opted to bypass Treadwell this year in favour of stable jockey Aidan Coleman who will now ride him indtead.

Treadwell had been without a National ride until the call from Nicholls and has since said “I’m obviously delighted to be riding for the champion trainer, as it’s my first ride for him. It’s also fantastic to be involved in the world’s greatest steeplechase once again and I just hope I can do well for all the horse’s owners.”