Ascending

The headline moment came at Royal Ascot on 17 June 2025, where Ascending won a Class 2 race — one of the top races in Britain — a result that felt both surprising and, looking back, entirely logical. De Bromhead has been open about the journey to get here. Ascending was originally bought to jump hurdles and showed promise doing it, but the horse never quite seemed to love it. It was David Roach, a member of the De Bromhead team, who spotted something on the flat and pushed for a change of direction. That instinct has been vindicated spectacularly. The Ascot win was not even the race they had originally targeted — De Bromhead had wanted a longer race and only ended up in this one by chance. His reaction afterwards said everything: "Someone put us in this race and we win. Happy days."

The overall numbers across 22 races — 4 wins from 22, which is roughly 1 in every 5-and-a-half races — do not tell the story the recent form does. The last six runs read 1-1-1-2-6-7 in reverse, meaning the horse has been building steadily and peaking at exactly the right time. At Ascot's trip of around a mile to a mile and a quarter, Ascending has won 1 from 3, a 33% win rate that suggests the distance suits. A York run in the same period showed what the horse is capable of even when falling just short — De Bromhead noted they were travelling better than anything halfway up the straight before getting edged out late, calling it "a blinder."

Behind all of this is a yard operating at serious volume. Henry De Bromhead, based at Knockeen in County Waterford, has sent out 107 winners this season alone. That is a stable that knows what it is doing, and when a horse from that operation starts winning at Ascot, it is worth paying attention. Ascending raced just one day ago, is clearly in the form of its life, and appears to have found exactly the right conditions — in distance, surface, and timing — to keep that going.