Split Elevens

John Butler's yard at Newmarket has been in fine form this season, sending out 34 winners, and Split Elevens has been part of that story. The horse just won at Wolverhampton this week — literally days ago — so it arrives at this moment of the season in the form of its life. Its recent run of results reads: a win, two fourth places, and a fifth, which paints the picture of a horse that is nearly always competitive and occasionally brilliant.

The place where Split Elevens really comes alive is Lingfield Park. Three wins from 11 races there might sound modest, but that's winning more than 1 in every 4 visits to the same venue — the kind of record that means punters circle the date when they see the entry. Some horses simply click with a particular track, its bends, its surface, its rhythm. Lingfield seems to suit this horse in a way that is hard to argue with.

Butler has spoken openly about Split Elevens being a bit of a character — the sort of horse that holds something in reserve, doesn't always show you everything it has. That personality makes the 12 career wins feel genuinely earned rather than handed over. Daniel Muscutt has ridden the horse nine times and won on 3 of those occasions — a win rate of 33%, or roughly 1 in every 3 rides together. That's a meaningful partnership by any measure, and clearly one that suits both horse and jockey.

The vast majority of Split Elevens' career — 52 of its 65 races — has come at Class 6, the bread-and-butter level of British racing. At that level it has won 11 times, a 21% win rate, or just over 1 in every 5 races. It may never trouble the big stages, but for a horse doing exactly what it was built to do, Split Elevens is a genuine success story.