Penzance

The six-year-old is very much a creature of habit when it comes to what he likes. He has won all four of his career races on normal ground conditions, going 4 from 21 in those circumstances — roughly 1 in every 5 races. He also finds his best form over a mile and three to a mile and four furlongs, winning 4 of 22 races at those trips. But his most striking number is at Chelmsford, where he has won 3 races from just 7 attempts. That is an extraordinary ratio — nearly half his career wins at a single track. His most recent victory came there on 13 March 2025.

Jockey Alistair Rawlinson has been central to most of what Penzance has achieved, riding him to all 4 wins from 19 races together — a win rate of around 1 in every 5 rides. That sort of partnership matters. The horse clearly knows the job when Rawlinson is in the saddle.

The current form figures tell a more complicated story: he has not won in his last 6 races, and his two most recent runs produced finishes of 11th and 2nd — inconsistent rather than declining. Loughnane has said the horse ran his best race yet on the turf at Doncaster recently, suggesting he has found another gear on grass after spending much of his career excelling on all-weather tracks. That has opened up bigger targets, and the team is pointing him towards the Cambridgeshire — one of the most competitive mile-and-a-quarter handicap races of the British flat season. Most of his wins have come at Class 2 level, where he has won just 1 from 14 races, so stepping into that kind of spotlight will be a genuine test. But given what this horse has already done in the last 18 months, writing him off seems premature.