Last year’s winner allotted top weight of 11st 12lb at handicap announcement for May race at Aintree

I Am Maximus, the easy winner of last year’s Grand National, will need to emulate a feat last achieved by the mighty Red Rum if he is to double up at Aintree on 5 April after he was allotted top weight of 11st 12lb when the handicap for the world’s most famous steeplechase was published on Tuesday.

Red Rum, who is buried next to the winning post at Aintree, is most familiar to the British sporting public as the only horse ever to win the Grand National three times, but he was also the last horse to carry top weight to victory, when he won for the second time – under what was then the maximum burden of 12st – in 1974.