Knockanore

The standout moment of Knockanore's career came at Newcastle in February 2025, when the horse stepped up and won a Class 2 race — one of the top races in Britain. That is a significant achievement for a horse that typically competes at Class 4 level, where it has won 3 from 14 races, or roughly 1 in every 5. Winning against better opposition than you usually face is the kind of result that makes a trainer sit up straight, and Ryan Potter's yard in Sellack, Herefordshire — which has sent out six winners already this season — will know that when the conditions are right, this horse can genuinely surprise people.

And conditions matter enormously here. On wet or muddy ground, Knockanore becomes a different proposition entirely: 2 wins from just 5 races on that surface, a remarkable 40% — nearly 2 in every 5 races. That figure is exceptional by any standard. A horse that wins 1 in 7 overall but nearly 2 in 5 on soft ground is not just a wet-weather performer, it is practically a specialist. When the forecast turns grey and the ground gets heavy, Knockanore becomes well worth paying attention to.

The recent picture is less rosy. Knockanore has not won in the last six races, and that Newcastle victory back in February 2025 now sits 14 months in the past. The latest sequence of finishes — a couple of fourth places, a seventh, a fifth, and a fifteenth — tells the story of a horse running respectably without threatening to win. Freddie Mitchell, who rides Knockanore most often, has one win together from eight attempts, around 1 in 8, which reflects the horse's overall pattern: competitive, consistent, but not firing at its very best right now.

Still, Knockanore raced just one day ago and is clearly still in training and being placed with care. A nine-year-old with a Class 2 win on its record, a proven love of wet ground, and a trainer in form is never a horse to write off entirely.