Liverpool Hurdle is Aintree winner

Even though the value of the world’s greatest steeplechase remains unchanged at £1m, the latest £100,000-plus boost represents the growing prestige of the North’s flagship meeting that takes place from April 7-9.

It now hosts 11 Grade One races and the biggest beneficiary is the three-mile Liverpool Hurdle on National day, which was won last year by Nicky Henderson’s Whisper after jockey Nico de Boinville got the better of a terrific tussle with the Warren Greatrex-trained and Gavin Sheehan-ridden Ladbrokes World Hurdle hero Cole Harden.

This race is now worth £150,000 – an increase of £30,000 on last year – and officials at the Merseyside track are hopeful that the boost will encourage more trainers to race their horses at both Cheltenham and Aintree.

By comparison, prize money at next month’s four-day Cheltenham Festival stands at £4.1m with Willie Mullins, Ireland’s champion trainer, among those to call for greater rewards for horses that triumph at jump racing’s Olympics

“The Grade One Liverpool Hurdle is a race that has really grown over the last decade,” said Aintree clerk of the course Andrew Tulloch. “All three of the Grade One novices’ chases are now worth £100,000, while there is no race on offer with a total prize fund of less than £40,000,”

This announcement precedes the publication tomorrow of the official weights for this year’s National in which there will be much focus on the Venetia Williams-trained Houblon des Obeaux, who was a runaway winner of the Betfair Denman Chase at Newbury after his rivals failed to handle the testing conditions.

Williams, who won the 2009 National with Mon Mome, fears the inevitable rise in the handicap could scupper her smart stayer’s National claims.

Meanwhile, Nick Williams remains perplexed that his stepdaughter Lizzie Kelly is not more widely used by trainers after the 5lb claimer won Newbury’s £150,000 Betfair Hurdle on Agrapart.

Kelly, 22, became the first female rider to win a Grade One jumps race in Britain when partnering Tea For Two to victory in the Kauto Star Novices’ Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day.

Both horses are trained by Williams, who said of the jockey: “She’s doing well and is good at it.

“She won the fixed brush handicap on Aubusson at Haydock last season, a Grade One on Tea For Two and the Lanzarote as well and now the Betfair Hurdle.

“That’s four quite big races she’s won and she was only beaten a whisker in a Grade One in Paris. She is quite accomplished yet she has not really caught on for a 22-year-old who has those big races in the bag by that age. I don’t understand it.”

Though Agrapart was on top when Tom Scudamore’s Starchitect blundered badly at the final flight, the outcome was not a total surprise – Kelly’s mount, a 16-1 chance, was good enough to finish third in Sandown’s Grade One Tolworth Hurdle to the Mullins-trained Yorkhill, who is a leading contender for all three novice hurdles at Cheltenham.

On what became Ladies Day at Newbury, Kerry Lee’s Top Gamble put up an authoritative display to take the scalp of Queen Mother Champion Chase hero Dodging Bullets in the Game Spirit Chase.

Top Gamble will certainly be a contender if it is a heavy ground Champion Chase while Paul Nicholls could not hide his disappointment with the run of Dodging Bullets.

“He needs to come on a long way from that to win a Champion Chase again. I’m under no illusions,” said Nicholls, who had hailed Dodging Bullets, prior to the Game Spirit, as his most likely Cheltenham winner this year.