Speeding Bullet

Midgley trains out of Westow in North Yorkshire and has sent out 39 winners this season alone, so he knows a useful horse when he has one. What he says about Speeding Bullet is telling: the horse puts its head down and gives you absolutely everything. That kind of attitude does not always show up in the results column, but it matters. It means you can trust it, count on it, rely on it to try — and in racing, that is rarer than it sounds.

The yard took a little while to figure out exactly what conditions bring out the best in this horse. He was tried over seven furlongs, then a mile, before they came back to six furlongs and found the sweet spot. His win at Pontefract in June 2025 came when everything lined up — six furlongs, wet and muddy ground — and that remains the template. When it has been dry and fast this summer, Speeding Bullet has been shunted back to five furlongs at Newcastle, where he ran with credit but never quite got his ideal conditions. His trainer is straightforward about it: six furlongs on soft ground is where this horse operates best.

Most of his racing has come at Class 5 level — the bread-and-butter tier of British racing — where he has won just 1 from 9 races at that grade. That is modest on paper, but his recent form figures of 7-11-2-2-4-1 show a horse that has been running into the places regularly and finishing second twice in his last five outings. He raced just yesterday, which means he is very much in the thick of an active campaign. If Paul Midgley can find him a race over six furlongs on a wet autumn day, there is every reason to think the horse that won at Pontefract is still in there somewhere, ready to put his head down and do it again.