Eldeyaar

What makes Eldeyaar genuinely interesting is how well it performs when the conditions are in its favour. On normal ground it wins 2 from 7 races, a rate of 29%, and on wet or muddy ground it is even better — 2 wins from just 6 races, or 33%. That means give it a soft, rain-soaked track or a standard surface, and it is suddenly performing like a completely different animal compared to its overall record. Most horses have a preference; Eldeyaar has two, which is a useful quality to have.

Ripon is a name worth remembering with this horse. Two wins from six races there makes it a genuine course specialist — the kind of stat that sounds modest until you consider how rarely horses find a track that suits them so completely. Trained by Antony Brittain at his yard in Warthill, North Yorkshire, Eldeyaar competes almost exclusively at Class 6 level, which is the bread-and-butter end of the sport — smaller fields, more accessible prize money, the level where a horse that knows what it is doing can really clean up. Six of its seven career wins have come at that level, from 50 attempts, a win rate of 12%.

Regular jockey Cam Hardie has partnered Eldeyaar 36 times — an enormous number that speaks to a long and consistent relationship — but the pair have only won together twice, a rate of around 1 in 18. That is a curious gap between experience and results, though the horse has clearly been winning with others in the saddle. Brittain's yard has sent out 23 winners already this season, so there is obvious momentum behind the whole operation. Eldeyaar first broke its duck at Wolverhampton back in August 2022, and nearly four years on, it is still racing, still placing, and still finding ways to win. That is a career in miniature worth following.