Champagne Twist

Champagne Twist is an eight-year-old with two wins from 16 races, which works out at roughly 1 in every 8 — not a headline number on its own. But the wins tell a more interesting story than the record suggests. He broke his duck at Doncaster in January 2024, and just six weeks later went straight to Sandown Park and won one of Britain's top-tier races, a Class 1. That is a remarkable jump in class, done quickly and convincingly. Jockey Ben Jones, who has won both of his races aboard the horse in 11 rides together, said afterwards that Champagne Twist was simply more streetwise than his rival at the final fence — and that on faster, drier ground, there was even more to come.

That promise, though, has spent the last 27 months sitting unfulfilled. Champagne Twist has not won since that day at Sandown, and his last six runs have produced nothing but blanks. Pauling has been candid about why: last season brought one setback after another, and the horse never got the chance to build on what he had done. When a trainer talks about "one problem after another," it usually means a frustrating carousel of minor injuries or illness — the kind of stop-start season that stops a horse finding any rhythm at all.

The encouraging news, heading into a new campaign, is that Pauling — who has been in excellent form, sending out 91 winners this season from his yard in Naunton — says Champagne Twist is looking and moving beautifully. The plan is patient and sensible: find a race on soft or muddy ground, away from the pressure of top-level competition for now, and let him rebuild. The hope is that the horse who turned up at Sandown and beat a field of quality youngsters is still in there somewhere, just waiting to be rediscovered. Given what he showed two seasons ago, that is not a hope without foundation.