Grand National

[Knight of Albion]

The reason why so many horses have died over the years is twofold - the size of the fences (quite a few been lowered now) and the size of the field (which they have reduced in recent times). If you ride wide you have further to go and are considerably disadvantaged, so jockeys ride close to the rails, which creates a bottleneck when they arrive at a fence, and especially when some fences have been built up - so the landing level is lower than the take off level on the other side, horses can break legs and sometimes necks if they fall.