Boothill

The peak of his career came in the autumn and winter of 2022 and 2023, when he put together a sequence that would make any trainer proud. He opened his account at Newton Abbot in October 2022, then won a top-two race at Ascot the following month, then took one of the biggest prizes in the calendar at Kempton Park on Boxing Day week. The following season he went back to Ascot and did it again — winning a top-two race in November 2023 and then, just nine days earlier, a Class 1, the very highest level. That's a horse operating at the sharp end of the sport.

His jockey Jonathan Burke has been central to most of this. Together they've won 5 of 11 races — that's nearly 1 in every 2 times they've partnered, a remarkable figure at any level of the sport. Trainer Harry Fry, who runs a yard in Dorset that has sent out 25 winners this season, has been candid about where Boothill belongs. After a fall at Newbury on heavy ground, Fry admitted that wet, testing conditions find out his breathing and that his true level is with the very best two-mile chasers in the country. The goal was the Champion Chase at Cheltenham — and when they got there, Fry declared afterwards that "a wonderful horse has beaten us," adding that Boothill "deserves to take his chance in all the good two-mile chases."

He hasn't won in his last six races, and his most recent finish — eighth — suggests the ground or the competition has been against him. But Boothill raced just yesterday and is still active at 11, which says something about his durability. His last win at Ascot was over two years ago now, but given what he's achieved there, it would be a brave person who writes him off when he returns.