Shayem

His career has followed a tidy upward curve. He broke his duck at Haydock Park in August 2025, then stepped up to win a top-two race at Epsom Downs in September, and then — most impressively — won a Class 1 race at Pontefract in October. That last result is the one that demands attention. Class 1 is as good as it gets in British racing, and winning one as a three-year-old, having only started racing a few months earlier, puts Shayem in a very small and select group.

The one blip on his record came when he was sent to Saudi Arabia for a race on dirt — an entirely different surface to the turf he runs on at home. His trainer K R Burke has been straightforward about it: he shouldn't have run there, the surface didn't suit him, and the result should be ignored. That kind of honest self-assessment from a trainer is worth paying attention to. Burke knows his horse, and his yard has sent out 140 winners already this season — this is not a man guessing.

What comes next looks genuinely exciting. Burke is pointing Shayem towards the Feilden Stakes and is keen to have some moisture in the ground — slightly wet conditions rather than the fast, dry surface that wouldn't play to the horse's strengths. His trainer describes him as a solid horse at Listed and Group 3 level, which are the races just below the very top tier, but adds pointedly that he might be a bit better than that. From a trainer not given to overstatement, that quiet confidence feels significant. Shayem is young, improving, and operating at the top end of the sport. Keep an eye on him.