Storm Free

His trainer James Tate, based at Newmarket, is having a strong season with 48 winners already on the board. Tate has been candid about what held Storm Free back early on: the horse used to miss a beat at the start, which cost him when races were tight. He finished second twice in a row before finally breaking more cleanly at Nottingham in April 2025, winning on his first run of the year on normal ground. Tate noted afterwards that the horse had effectively been a winner-in-waiting — the talent was always there, the slow starts were simply hiding it.

The ground matters more than it might seem with this horse. On normal conditions, Storm Free has won 2 of his 5 races — a 40% win rate, which is exceptional. That means roughly 2 in every 5 times he has raced on a fair surface, he has come home first. That is not a coincidence; it is a preference worth knowing about. His most recent win came at Leicester in October 2025, and Tate believes he is better than his current rating of 83 suggests — which, in racing terms, means the official handicapper may not yet have caught up with how good this horse actually is.

His last six runs read 19-6-1-2-3-1, which needs a little unpacking. Read from right to left — most recent last — that is two wins bookending a run of placed efforts and one poor result. The 19th-place finish on his most recent outing stands out as sharply out of character for a horse with this level of consistency, but he only raced one day ago, so the full story on that run is still fresh. What is clear is that when conditions suit and he gets out of the gate cleanly, Storm Free is a horse who finds a way to be involved. With a yard in form and a trainer who clearly has faith in him, this is one to keep an eye on.