Sogna In Grande

His first win came at Warwick in November 2025, and by all accounts it caught even his own team slightly off guard. Kim Bailey had expected a decent showing on debut, but the race looked strong on paper, and winning it so comfortably prompted jockey Tom Bellamy to call it "very pleasing" — the kind of measured understatement that usually means something genuinely exciting has just happened. Bailey himself described Sogna In Grande as a horse who is "all over a chaser", a big, scopey type who had already won a point-to-point before arriving in training. That background matters: point-to-point winners tend to arrive knowing what racing is about.

Then, just when things were picking up momentum, the horse was stopped in his tracks — not by injury, but by ringworm, an infection that Bailey says hit Sogna In Grande harder than anything he had seen before. It wiped him out, cost him months, and sent the whole operation back to square one. The fact that he came back at all is worth noting. The fact that he came back and won at Wincanton in April 2026 — making it two wins from three — is something else entirely.

Bailey and fellow trainer Mat Nicholls are based in Cheltenham and have had 31 winners this season, so this is a yard that knows how to place a horse. The early signs suggest Sogna In Grande is one they are genuinely excited about. Bailey has already flagged that he wants a proper trip and that the chasing route is where the future lies. Recent form reads 1-1-4, and with a race just yesterday, this is a horse very much in the thick of things. Whether he steps up in class or drops into a different type of race next, he arrives at that decision having answered most of the early questions with a confident yes.