Under-fire Grand National needs clean bill of health after the fatalities of the last two years The key alteration is one which even those hardy souls who walk the course would not notice had they not been informed about it. The core of the fences, on which mounds of freshly cut spruce are interwoven and from which Ginger McCain would annually pick a sprig for his buttonhole, are no longer padded wooden stakes hammered into the ground which used to bring horses to a juddering halt and, naked, looked like WWII tank defences on south coast beaches. Now they are now built from EasyFix plastic "birch." They should be solid enough not to budge if hit, but more forgiving than their forebears. They trialled well in the autumn and, while there is little evidence to go on so far, Baker has no doubt it is the most significant change in many years. "We won't know until 40 horses have galloped round four- and-a-half miles but one's gut instinct is that this is a fantastically positive move," he said. Another measure introduced is a default setting of good to soft ground and no faster. This should slow up the race and, as a general rule of thumb, the softer the landing, the easier a fall. The start has always been a key problem, peaking in the void National of 1993. Quite apart from anything else, a shabby start looks unprofessional and jockeys must grasp this. Last year instead of manfully shouldering some of the blame they took umbrage that stewards dare accuse them. Moving the start 90 yards down the course away from the "cauldron" of the old start, which is surrounded by enormous crowds, is certainly worth a try. But my feeling is that 90 yards is not quite one thing or another. If it is the crowds that rev the jockeys and horses up - it was the ultimate prize in horse racing four-and-a-half miles away which excited me - they are not really far away enough and there is still time for a horse to reach full speed before the first. One suspects, in time, the start will be pulled further forward to beyond the Melling Road. Another new initiative this year is that the starter will stay on his rostrum throughout the starting process and will not get involved in his traditional role of tightening girths. The unseemly rush of runners for the tapes trying to anticipate the start - not unlike the moment silence breaks out in a child's game of musical chairs - whipped up by the crowd raising their cheers to a crescendo, generally begins as soon as the starter takes his first step towards his rostrum. Throughout the race's history there have been changes and counter-changes to the course. It is nothing new. In medicine, the best cures often have the worst side-effects and the fact that horses do occasionally get killed in the race was starkly brought into the nation's living rooms as an unintended consequence of a welfare improvement - bypassing the fences that gave loose horses an alternative to jumping - in 2011, when people wondered why two fences were missed out. "We feel," said Aintree chairman Lord Daresbury on Saturday, "that the changes made set a fair test for horse and rider in a sport that can never be risk-free." With horses, though, there is a degree of risk every time you take them out of a stable and that was no better illustrated than the premature demise of Mr Frisk, who skipped round Aintree with me, a semi-competent amateur, on board in 1990, as if the fences were not there. In retirement, he slipped up and broke a leg on a quiet country lane. To put the National into some sort of perspective on the danger scale, while 26 horses may have been killed since 1979, it pales beside the 116 riders killed in the same period in the Isle of Man TT races. Further changes to Becher's have been resisted. The increasingly political RSPCA has put the fence on a "yellow card" but, as a former jockey who only ever had one dream, to conquer Aintree, it is essential to the essence of the Grand National that our greatest race remains an extraordinary one-off challenge.