Stolen Silver

His career record reads three wins from 22 races, which works out at roughly 1 in every 7 runs. That sounds modest, but the quality of those wins is anything but. His very first victory came at Market Rasen in October 2021, and even then his jockey Charlie Deutch noted how well he moved on quick, dry ground — bouncing off it, as he put it. That free-going style carried him all the way to Cheltenham in April 2022, where he landed a Class 1 race: one of the top races in Britain, at the sport's biggest venue. For a horse to win at that level in just his third career victory is genuinely impressive, and it marked him out as something special.

He underlined it at Chepstow in October 2023, winning a Class 2 race to confirm he belonged among the better horses in training. But that was 31 months ago now, and the wins have dried up. His last six races have produced nothing, and his recent form figures — a seventh, a fourteenth, two more fourteenths — make grim reading. Trainer Georgina Nicholls, whose yard at Kingston Lisle has still sent out 11 winners this season, is candid about what went wrong: the ground has been too fast on his recent runs, and a horse who thrives on normal conditions simply does not want to race on firm, sun-baked turf. Of his nine races in normal conditions, he has won two — a 22% win rate, or roughly 1 in every 4 — which is a very healthy figure at this level.

The plan, as Nicholls described it late last year, was a spin over hurdles on softer ground to help him rediscover his confidence. He is sound, he is well, and the ability is still there. Whether an eleven-year-old can recapture the form that took him to Cheltenham glory is the question his team is trying to answer. Sam Twiston-Davies, who has won 2 of their 8 races together, remains the regular partner. The hope is that the right ground, the right day, and a clear round of jumping might remind everyone — including the horse — of what he is capable of.