Sonic Si

Tony Carroll, who trains him out of Cropthorne in Worcestershire, puts it simply: this horse kept bumping into one. Time and again Sonic Si would finish close, place, run respectably — and still leave the track without a win. Carroll's yard has been in fine form this season, sending out 136 winners, so he knows the difference between a horse who is genuinely competitive and one who is just filling out a field. His assessment of Sonic Si is that he genuinely deserved to win.

What makes the story more interesting is where this horse came from. He was bought for just 1,000 guineas — a bargain-bin price in racing terms, the kind of figure that buys a punt rather than a prospect. Carroll admits they never saw him as an early developer; he was simply too big, too much of a monster physically to be rushed. But week after week of work, he kept coming back, and somewhere in that quiet persistence a racehorse emerged.

The plan now is to run him at Catterick on Friday before sending him for a minor surgical procedure to address a wind problem — something Carroll believes is costing him in the final 50 yards of races, exactly where it hurts most. That detail explains a lot about his form. The recent sequence of 1-3-4-3-4-7 shows a horse who gets himself into contention and then just fades when it matters. Fix the breathing, and there may be more wins to come.

He has raced six times at Class 5 level without winning until now, so breaking through at that grade is a genuine step forward. At 4 years old, with his physical development and a small but meaningful wind issue potentially resolved, Sonic Si is a horse whose best racing may still be ahead of him. For a horse that cost less than a decent second-hand car, that is quite a thing.