Gstaad

The story of his season so far reads like a well-plotted adventure. He broke his duck at Navan in May 2025, then stepped up dramatically to win a Class 1 race at Ascot in June — one of the top races in Britain — before heading across the Atlantic to Del Mar, where he won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf. His jockey described it plainly afterwards: "I think Gstaad is just good." Hard to argue. By the time he came off the bend at Del Mar, the rider already knew the race was won.

Those second-place finishes in Europe — including one at Newmarket's Dewhurst Stakes, where he got boxed in behind a slow pace — are best understood not as defeats but as races that got away from him. His trainer Aidan O'Brien, whose yard at Cashel, Co Tipperary has fired out 144 winners this season alone, felt there was more to come after Newmarket, and the Breeders' Cup proved him right. O'Brien noted at the time that Gstaad had a habit of coasting when he got to the front and not doing a great deal — the kind of quirk that makes a trainer slightly nervous but also suggests a horse with plenty in reserve.

The next chapter is already being written. O'Brien has pointed Gstaad at either the English or Irish 2,000 Guineas next season — the defining Classic races for three-year-olds on this side of the Atlantic. He will be older and stronger, and if his rivals thought he was good on wet nights in Ireland or fast ground at Ascot, they may find the upgraded version of him at Newmarket or the Curragh a rather more daunting proposition.