Heart Above

Trained by Dianne Sayer out of Hackthorpe in Cumbria, Heart Above is part of a yard that has sent out 15 winners this season, so there's clearly something working up in the north of England. Sayer's operation doesn't make headlines the way the big southern stables do, but 15 winners in a season is a genuine achievement and suggests a trainer who knows exactly where to place her horses and when to run them.

Heart Above competes mainly at Class 5 level — the bread-and-butter tier of British racing, where the competition is beatable on the right day. It has won 2 of its 14 races at that level, which works out at roughly 1 in every 7. Modest, but not without hope. Its most trusted partner in the saddle is Henry Brooke, who has ridden it in 14 of those races and picked up 2 of its 4 wins — a win rate of about 1 in 7 together, which mirrors the overall picture fairly neatly.

What's worth flagging is the timing of its wins. The first didn't arrive until September 2024 at Perth, and the most recent came at Kelso in November 2025 — meaning Heart Above took over a year to find the winner's enclosure again after that debut success. Its last six races tell a similar story of near-misses and blank returns, with a fourth and a sixth as the highlights and two runs from which no finishing position was recorded.

Racing just yesterday, Heart Above is as active as they come at this stage of a career. Whether that recent run offers any clue about what comes next, only Dianne Sayer's team will know. But a horse that has been competitive enough to place 15 times in 32 races, and found the winner's enclosure as recently as five months ago, hasn't said its final word yet.