Devil's Advocate

The sweet spot is a distance of around a mile and three to a mile and four furlongs. At that range, Devil's Advocate has won 2 from 5 races — 40%, or nearly 1 in every 2. That's not a coincidence; that's a horse telling you exactly what it needs. Zoom out to the full career picture and those two wins start to look carefully targeted rather than accidental.

The bigger win came at Doncaster on 11 September 2025 — a Class 2 race, which means one of the better contests in Britain. Doncaster in September hosts some of the most prestigious flat racing of the year, so landing a Class 2 there is genuinely meaningful. The first win arrived at Chelmsford the previous October, which gave the team confirmation they had something worth pointing at bigger targets. The progression from Chelmsford to Doncaster in under a year is a neat upward curve.

There is one obvious tension in the record. Devil's Advocate typically runs in Class 1 races — the very top level — and has yet to win any of those five attempts. A 0 from 5 record at the highest grade isn't a disgrace; plenty of very good horses spend careers placing at Class 1 without winning one. But it does suggest the horse is a strong competitor at the level just below the summit rather than a genuine elite performer — for now, at least.

Trained by John and Thady Gosden out of Newmarket, Devil's Advocate is in one of the busiest and most successful yards in the country — 135 winners already this season. That context matters: when a stable of that size and quality keeps running a horse at the top level, they clearly believe there's a big result in it somewhere. With the Doncaster win only eight months ago and a race just yesterday, this is a horse still very much in the conversation.