Leading jumps trainer Robert Smerdon has denounced suggestions the Grand National Hurdle and Steeplechase races should be relocated to the country.The Grand Nationals are the pinnacle of jumps racing in Australia with the steeplechase first run in 1866 and the hurdle in 1881.Racing Victoria Limited and the Victoria Racing Club last week announced the end of jumps racing at Flemington following the release of Judge David Jones' Jumps Racing Review.Smerdon said suggestions the Grand Nationals be t

Leading jumps trainer Robert Smerdon has denounced suggestions the Grand National Hurdle and Steeplechase races should be relocated to the country.

The Grand Nationals are the pinnacle of jumps racing in Australia with the steeplechase first run in 1866 and the hurdle in 1881.

Racing Victoria Limited and the Victoria Racing Club last week announced the end of jumps racing at Flemington following the release of Judge David Jones' Jumps Racing Review.

Smerdon said suggestions the Grand Nationals be transferred away from the city would be detrimental to those races both in terms of prizemoney and status.

"The Nationals at Sandown has to be a given," Smerdon said.

"To give those races the focus and prizemoney they deserve they have got to be run in the city."

Warrnambool has been mooted as a possible host of the Grand Nationals next year but Smerdon said such a proposition would work against that club's highly successful three-day May carnival featuring the Grand Annual Steeplechase.

"You can't tie the Grand National in to Warrnambool as it will take away from what is already there.

"The Nationals would get lost in the country and Warrnambool works the way it is."

The Jumps Racing Review lists Warrnambool, Casterton, Coleraine, Hamilton, Yarra Valley and Sandown as the most suitable Victorian tracks for jumps racing.,

Judge Jones stopped short in his essential recommendations of saying jumps racing should only be held on those tracks but made a non-essential recommendation that consideration be given to holding more jumps races at the venues most suitable for the sport.

The report also listed as a non-essential recommendation that consideration be given to developing suitable venues as centres of excellence for jumps racing.

Melbourne Racing Club chief executive Warran Brown said his club was a supporter of jumps racing and was open to the Grand Nationals being run at Sandown.

"The committee will meet to see if the criteria can be fulfilled but we can probably do it," Brown said.

He said relocation of the Grand Nationals to the country was only speculation.