Hand Of God

The wins have come at some of the sport's most recognisable venues. A first career victory at Newmarket in October 2023 was followed by a Class 2 success at Sandown Park in April 2024, then another at Ascot in June 2024 — the sort of track that tends to separate the genuinely good from the merely decent. Most recently, Hand Of God won at Newbury just this week, which is about as current as form gets.

That most recent win is worth dwelling on. The recent sequence — 1, 7, 14, 6, 9, 1 reading from most recent backwards — shows a horse that dipped out of form for a spell, finishing well down the field in a run of races, before bouncing back to win. Some horses go through patches like that and never quite recapture their best. Hand Of God clearly has.

Behind the horse is trainer Harry Charlton, based at Beckhampton in Wiltshire. With 38 winners sent out already this season, Charlton's yard is operating at a strong clip — this is not a stable ticking over quietly in the background. When a yard is firing on all cylinders like that, it tends to mean horses are being placed well and arriving at their races in good shape, which adds weight to any result they produce.

A five-year-old still competing at this level, still winning at major tracks, still trained by a yard in peak form — Hand Of God is the kind of horse that rewards attention. Raced just yesterday, with a win already on the board this week, this is a profile very much written in the middle of an active story rather than at the end of one.