Anzac Day

From six races, Anzac Day has won once and placed once, a win rate of around 1 in 6. That is modest, but the single victory came at Newmarket, one of the most prestigious venues in British racing, back in October 2023. Newmarket is a long, flat, unforgiving track where horses with genuine ability tend to show it — there is nowhere to hide. Winning there at any level is something to respect.

The concern is what has happened since. That Newmarket win now sits 30 months in the past, and Anzac Day has not got back to the winner's enclosure in the five runs that followed. Recent form reads 6-7-5 before a gap in the record, and the horse is now returning after a break of roughly six months — the longest absence of its career so far. Horses come back from breaks for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes a fresher, more mature version of a horse returns to the track. Whether that is the case here remains to be seen.

What gives some cause for optimism is the yard behind it. Andrew Balding trains from Kingsclere in Hampshire, and his team has sent out 204 winners already this season — a seriously productive operation. That kind of volume does not happen by accident. Balding has a knack for placing horses where they can win, and bringing a four-year-old back from a rest with a plan is exactly the sort of thing a stable of that quality does well.

Anzac Day is now four years old, which for a horse with only six races on the board means there is still plenty of racing ahead. The record is not eye-catching, but the CV is short enough that a single good run could reframe the whole picture. One win from six races is a thin ledger — but that one win came somewhere that matters, and the horse has a proper trainer in its corner. The next chapter is still very much unwritten.