Ice Max

What makes Ice Max genuinely interesting is where those wins have come from. Two of his seven career victories have been in Class 1 races — the highest level of competition in Britain — at Goodwood and Nottingham, with a Class 2 win at York sandwiched in between. His first career win came at Catterick in August 2023, and in a little over two years he has gone from a first-time winner at a northern track to beating the best horses in the country at Goodwood. That kind of upward trajectory is not common, and it tells you this horse has genuinely improved as he has matured.

He is trained by K R Burke at Coverham in North Yorkshire, a yard that has sent out 140 winners already this season — one of the most productive operations in the north of England. Burke has been clear that Ice Max is a horse who loves wet or muddy ground and a pace that never lets up, which suits his free-going style. The challenge has been persuading him to switch off early in a race, and by the evidence of his last two wins, it seems he has finally started to figure that out. His regular rider, Clifford Lee, has been on board for 13 of his races and has won 5 of them together — a partnership that knows each other well.

Recent form reads 3-1-1-7-5-2, which is a sequence any trainer would be quietly pleased with. He has won 2 of his last 6 races and has barely finished out of the first three in that stretch, with only one poor run interrupting what has been a consistent campaign at the top level. His rider after the Nottingham win described him as a proper Group horse — meaning a horse built for the most prestigious races — and the form book backs that up. With the yard pointing him towards a mile on soft ground as the season opens, Ice Max looks like a horse with unfinished business at the very top of the sport.