Storm Star

Those Newcastle wins are not in small, forgettable races either. Three of them have come at Class 2 level, which represents some of the better prize races in British racing. Storm Star won there on New Year's Day 2025, again on 17 January, and then returned to do it a third time on 18 April. That hat-trick of wins at the top end of the track's programme, spread across just a few months, is the sort of consistency that is genuinely hard to achieve.

The horse also has a strong preference for normal ground conditions, winning 4 of 9 races on a standard surface — that is a 44% win rate, nearly 1 in every 2 races, which is a remarkable conversion. When conditions are right and the track is Newcastle, Storm Star becomes a very different proposition to what the basic career numbers suggest.

Andrew Balding's yard at Kingsclere is having a productive season, having sent out 202 winners already — so this is not a small operation chancing its arm. Storm Star is an active part of a serious string, and with its most recent run coming just yesterday, it is clearly in the thick of a campaign right now. The recent form reads a little mixed — a second place two runs back sandwiched between some mid-field finishes — but the April win at Newcastle is the freshest data point that matters. When this horse goes back to its favourite track in the right conditions, you already know what tends to happen.