Jasmin De Grugy

Honeyball has had a productive season — 51 winners sent out this year alone — and Jasmin De Grugy has been one of the yard's more interesting projects. The horse burst into life in May 2024, winning three times that month, beginning at Ffos Las. Then in January 2025 he landed his most recent win at Newbury, a track that tends to sort the good ones out. Honeyball was measured after that race, saying it might be his ceiling but that it was hard to know — and that he was now eligible to try something more ambitious. That kind of cautious optimism is worth paying attention to.

Jockey Richie McLernon has been the man in the saddle for most of Jasmin De Grugy's career, and the numbers between them are striking: 5 wins from just 11 races together, meaning they win almost 1 in every 2 times they team up (45%). McLernon has noted that the horse was initially a little awkward jumping fences when schooling, but that the team did the work to smooth that out — and the results have followed. That kind of detail matters: a horse that learns to jump clean over time is a horse with a future.

He is at his best on normal ground, winning 2 from 3 races (67%) in those conditions, and he finds his sweet spot in the mid-level Class 4 races, winning 3 of his 7 starts at that level (43%). The trainer believes he is a genuine three-mile chaser, and his form suggests he has the stamina and the jumping to back that up. He has not won in his last 6 races, but he was placed twice in that spell and raced just yesterday — so he remains very much in the game. Whether there is a bigger prize waiting for him is the question Honeyball is clearly keen to answer.