Dance In The Storm

The career started at Wolverhampton in January 2025, which is where many horses find their feet on the all-weather surface during winter. What matters is what has happened since. The most recent win came at Chester just this week — and Chester is one of the most unusual and demanding tracks in Britain, a tight left-handed circuit where position and timing matter enormously. Winning there takes a sharp, adaptable horse, and Dance In The Storm delivered. That makes two wins from the last six races, a run of form that puts it firmly in the conversation as a horse worth following.

The trainer is Andrew Balding, operating out of Kingsclere in Hampshire, and this is a yard in serious form — 202 winners already this season, which is the kind of number that tells you they know what they're doing with a horse and when to run it. Balding has a reputation for placing his horses intelligently, and Dance In The Storm looks like a prime example of that approach paying off.

Oisin Murphy, one of the best jockeys in Britain, has been in the saddle for five of the nine races and has won once together with the horse — a 20% win rate, or roughly 1 in every 5 rides. That is actually a solid return given Murphy tends to be booked for horses with genuine prospects rather than just making up the numbers.

The one question mark is at Class 2 level, which represents the upper tier of British racing below the very top events. Dance In The Storm has run three times at that level and is yet to win — zero from three. That is not necessarily a problem at this stage of a career, and the Chester win this week will have done plenty to suggest the gap is narrowing. Whether it can take that step up and win against the best is the interesting question hanging over the next few months.