Donald McCain, whose family name is synonymous with the Grand National, has called for the latest alterations made to the race to represent “a line in the sand”. The trainer, who triumphed at Aintree last year with Ballabriggs and was speaking here at his Cheshire yard on Tuesday, urged racing to start standing up for itself.

McCain, whose late father Ginger trained Red Rum to win the race three times in the 1970s, believes Ballabriggs has a legitimate chance of becoming the first horse since to win the contest in consecutive years.

Images of Ballabriggs having buckets of iced water thrown over him after the winning post last year caused disquiet among many and the fallout from the race in which two horses were killed resulted in a number of changes, including modifications to the size of three National fences and increased restrictions over horse and jockey eligibility.

Despite some understandable frustration at seeing his first National winner denied the chance to walk back into the winner’s enclosure to the usual hero’s reception, McCain feels nothing more than disappointment at the way events unfolded.

“It didn’t bother me and it didn’t bother the horse but I felt sorry for Aintreebecause there is no racecourse in the country that does more for the horses,” he said.

“When you looked down the track last year, there was about half a mile of buckets of ice-cold water lined up and loads of people ready to help, even if it was just a precautionary thing. Maybe they were guilty of shooting themselves in the foot a little bit by trying to be so transparent and that was unfortunate.”

McCain, whose father it was announced is to be commemorated with a bronze bust overlooking the parade ring, said he was prepared to accept the alterations that will be made before this year’s race if they helped to guarantee the future of the Grand National.

“It’s done now,” he said. “Aintree are doing what is best for the race, although I don’t think anybody who had anything to do with it [the National] felt changes needed to be made. I can’t see a huge difference to be honest.

“A lot was made of the deaths last year but accidents will happen. That’s horses. That’s horse racing or any other equine pursuit – even just taking a horse for a ride in the country. It’s not because it’s the Grand National.

“People don’t understand the whole thing and I hope we’ve drawn a line in the sand now and say ‘that’s the Grand National, now leave it alone, it’s the greatest race in the world’. We have to stand up and back what we do.”

In response, Aintree’s managing director, Julian Thick, said that measures taken to promote horse welfare, including the changes to the fences, would be emphasised ahead of this year’s race.

“Opportunities were not taken that should have been last year but we’ve sat down since with the British Horseracing Authority and we know we need to get across everything we are doing, both in the BBC broadcast and through all media,” he said. “We didn’t manage to get across last year that all people were seeing was the welfare of horses in action but we’ve gota good relationship with the BBC, who support the race and we will be as pro-active as possible in getting our key messages across. We know that the race is an important shop window for racing as a whole.”

The race, backed by John Smith’s for the eighth year and set to be run for record prize money of £1m in 2013, is not certain to be screened by the BBC – who have broadcast it since 1960 – beyond this year. Media rights from 2013 for all races at the tracks which come under the Racecourse Media Group umbrella, including Aintree, are currently under negotiation.

Although the National is a ‘listed’ event, meaning that under Government legislation it must be screened on a terrestrial television channel, there is the potential for it to be offered as a deal-sweetener to Channel 4, who screen the vast majority of terrestrially televised racing in the country.

“Everything is up for grabs, and it’s not impossible that it could move across networks, but it won’t be given away,” said a source involved with the talks.

“It attracted 8.8m viewers on BBC last year, which is half a million more than the FA Cup Final got, so it remains one of the biggest sporting events of the year.”

Channel 4 broadcast for the first time from the track in December when covering the Becher Chase meeting.