Get Up Everybody

Paul Midgley, who trains out of Westow in North Yorkshire and has sent out 39 winners already this season, is not losing faith. He describes Get Up Everybody as a big, raw horse who has simply been slow to mature — the sort that takes time to fill out physically and mentally before everything clicks. And there are encouraging signs. Just last week, the horse finished second at Thirsk, which Midgley puts down to running into a rival that was very well-placed in the weights — essentially, the other horse had been given a generous rating by the handicapper, making it harder to beat than it looked. That is the kind of defeat you can live with.

Jockey David Nolan has been in the saddle for eight of those eleven races and is yet to get the horse over the line, but the partnership clearly has continuity and trust behind it. The horse competes mostly at Class 5 level, which is where most horses spend their working lives — not the glamour end of the sport, but competitive enough that finishing second or third still takes real ability. The recent form of 4-3-3-8-2-3 (that is, finishing fourth, then third, then third, eighth, second, and third) suggests a horse that is becoming more consistent, creeping closer to the front without quite breaking through.

Midgley's assessment is that the rating Get Up Everybody currently carries underestimates what the horse is genuinely capable of. In racing terms, that is quietly significant — it means when everything lines up, the horse could be priced generously and hit form at exactly the right moment. Raced just yesterday and still active, this is a horse whose first win feels like a matter of when, not if.