Blue Rc

Trainer James Tate, based at Newmarket, has been patient and methodical. His yard has sent out 48 winners this season alone, and Blue Rc is one of the more interesting projects among them. Tate started the horse over six furlongs on a curved track with a hood to help it focus, then slowly extended the trip to a mile and removed the hood as the horse matured. That kind of gradual, bespoke handling is exactly what a mentally fragile young horse needs, and it has paid off.

The clearest proof came on New Year's Day 2026 at Southwell, where Blue Rc won a Class 2 race — one of the higher tier events in British racing. That is a significant step up in class, and it arrived not by accident but by steady progression. At the level where it has raced most often, it has won 2 of its 3 races there, a success rate of 67%, which is genuinely impressive. Its recent sequence of 9-2-2-1-2-2 shows a horse that finished second four times in its last six races before that Southwell win — knocking on the door repeatedly before kicking it open.

What makes the next chapter genuinely interesting is what Tate said after Southwell: Blue Rc has qualified for the All-Weather Finals, a prestigious end-of-season series held on artificial surfaces, and the team is now weighing up whether to give it a short break and aim for that or keep it ticking over on grass in the meantime. A horse still maturing mentally and physically, trained by one of the most productive yards in the country, heading into the sort of race it has specifically qualified for — that is a horse with a real story still to tell.