Crac De Megaudais

That single victory came at Fakenham on New Year's Day 2025, now 17 months in the rearview mirror. It remains the one bright moment in a career that otherwise reads as a long lesson in almost. A win rate of 7% — roughly 1 win from every 14 races — tells you this is a horse operating at the lower end of the sport, typically running in Class 5 races, which are the bread-and-butter mid-week contests where most professional racehorses spend most of their lives. Even at that level, Crac De Megaudais has won only 1 from 9 attempts, or about 1 in every 9 races — competitive enough to keep its place in the yard's plans, but not quite able to get its nose in front.

Regular jockey Robert Dunne has not yet found the key, with no wins from their five outings together. That said, the horse has been placed three times in its last six runs — finishing third on two occasions — so it is not running badly. It is simply finding the winner's enclosure a difficult destination to reach. Trainer Tom Gretton, based at Inkberrow in Worcestershire, has had a decent enough season with 13 winners sent out from his yard, so the operation clearly knows what it is doing. Whether there is a race out there that suits Crac De Megaudais well enough to add a second win to its tally is the question.

What makes this horse mildly fascinating is that it raced just yesterday and is still active, still trying. At seven, it is not a youngster with untapped potential — this is largely what it is. But horses like this are the backbone of jump racing in Britain: dependable, durable, and occasionally capable of surprising everyone on the right day, on the right track. Fakenham proved that once. Perhaps it will again.