Khabib

Look at where Khabib does its best work and a pattern emerges immediately. At Southwell, this horse has won 2 races from just 7 visits — nearly 1 in 3 — which is a dramatically better record than the 1 win from 24 races it has managed at Class 4 level more broadly. Southwell is an all-weather track in Nottinghamshire with a distinctive artificial surface, and some horses simply click with it in a way that defies easy explanation. Khabib is one of them. Add in the fact that it wins roughly 1 in 3 races on normal ground and 1 in every 3.5 sprint races under five furlongs, and you have a horse that rewards patience — it needs its conditions just right, but when they align, it delivers.

The difficulty is that those conditions have not aligned in a while. Khabib has not won since Southwell on 24 November 2023 — now 30 months ago — and the last six races have produced a second place as the best result, with a ninth most recently. At eight years old, the horse is not getting younger, and its most regular jockey Tom Eaves has one win from ten rides together, a 10% return that mirrors the career average rather than improving on it.

David Thompson trains Khabib from his yard in Bolam, County Durham, and the team has sent out 9 winners this season, so there is clearly ability in the yard to find a race for the right horse at the right moment. Khabib raced just yesterday and remains active, which at least signals the horse is sound and still in work. If Thompson can get Khabib back to Southwell, over the shortest distances, on a normal surface, there is a genuine case for one more winning moment. The horse has done it before, more than once, and that is not nothing.