Hover On The Wind

The vast majority of Hover On The Wind's racing has come at Class 5 level, which is where most horses spend their careers without fanfare. At that level, though, the record is genuinely encouraging — 3 wins from 15 races, a win rate of roughly 1 in 5, which is a strong return. The first career win came at Great Yarmouth in May 2024, and the most recent at Newcastle in December 2025, suggesting a horse that can find the line when the conditions are right.

Trainer Paul Midgley, whose yard at Westow in North Yorkshire has sent out 39 winners already this season — a yard clearly in good nick — has spoken openly about what makes this horse tick. He showed plenty of natural speed over six furlongs at Thirsk early on, but the team brought him back to five furlongs and found a more genuine, focused version of the horse. A solid second at Pontefract suggested things were clicking, until an incident at the starting stalls appeared to knock his confidence and left him badly outpaced. Midgley was clear that the performance that followed at Beverley didn't represent the horse at his best, and that there's more to come.

Recent form reads 10-3-7-7-1-8 — patchy on the surface, but there's a win tucked in there from five months ago, and a third-place finish that shows he can still get competitive. The jockey most associated with him is Barry McHugh, who has won 1 of their 5 races together — that's a 20% win rate as a partnership, which is actually better than the horse's overall career average. When those two click, they tend to get results. With an active, well-performing yard behind him and a trainer who believes there's more to give, Hover On The Wind is the kind of horse you don't write off lightly.