Doctor Steinberg

Trained by Willie Mullins at his powerful yard in Co Carlow — a team that has sent out an extraordinary 230 winners already this season — Doctor Steinberg has become one of those horses that keeps confounding expectations. His trainer openly admits he thought the horse needed fast, dry ground to be at his best, based on his breeding. What he got instead was a horse winning impressively on wet, heavy ground at Leopardstown in February 2026, three months ago, pulling hard and still finding more up the straight. That is the kind of performance that makes a trainer rethink everything they assumed about a horse.

The debate now playing out in the yard is a genuinely interesting one. Jockey Danny Mullins, after a win at Navan over two and a half miles, floated the idea that Doctor Steinberg could be a live contender for the Albert Bartlett at Cheltenham — one of the most prestigious staying races in Britain and Ireland for younger horses. Willie Mullins, watching him win at Leopardstown, found himself thinking differently: the horse travels so freely and pulls so hard for his jockey that three miles around Cheltenham, with a fast, searching pace, might ask questions he cannot yet answer. That tension — between a horse with obvious stamina in his bloodlines and one that is clearly not short of speed — is exactly what makes him fascinating to follow.

What is not in doubt is that Doctor Steinberg is a horse in form and still improving. He has placed in seven of nine races — that means he has finished in the prizes in almost every race he has entered — and winning four of those nine, roughly 4 in every 9 runs, puts him well above the average. For a horse that only found winning late, the trajectory is pointing sharply upward, and wherever Mullins points him next, he will go there as one of the most intriguing young staying horses in training.