Spellacy's Cross

The seven-year-old is trained by James M Barcoe out of Gowran in Co. Kilkenny, a yard that has sent out 7 winners this season and clearly knows how to place a horse. Both of Spellacy's Cross's wins came in the autumn of 2025 — first on 2 October at Clonmel, then again at the same track on 23 October — suggesting the team identified something they liked and went back for more. That second win was just three weeks after the first, which points to a horse hitting a real purple patch rather than getting lucky once.

The regular partnership with jockey Kieran Callaghan tells a more complicated story. Callaghan has ridden Spellacy's Cross 11 times without a win between them, and notably, neither of those Clonmel victories came with him in the saddle. That's not necessarily a criticism — plenty of perfectly good jockeys simply don't click with every horse — but it's a detail worth noting. The horse has shown it can win; it just hasn't done so with its most frequent partner.

Recent form reads 3-–-6-–-5-1 from the last six runs, with that "1" — the win — sitting at the end of the sequence. The dashes indicate runs where a finishing position wasn't recorded, which can happen for various reasons, but the broader picture is a horse that finishes mid-pack more often than not, with one bright exception. With 10 places from 26 races, Spellacy's Cross is competitive often enough to keep the yard hopeful. The obvious play, if you were the trainer, would be straightforward: when Clonmel comes around again, pack the bags.