Thunder Star

The most interesting detail in Thunder Star's record is what happens when the rain arrives. On soft, wet ground, the horse has won 2 of just 7 races — that is a 29% win rate, nearly 1 in 3, compared to a much more modest record on drier surfaces. For a horse that otherwise plods along at average level, that jump in performance is significant. When the heavens open before a race, Thunder Star becomes a genuinely different proposition.

Then there is Doncaster. Trained locally by Jessica Macey just down the road in South Yorkshire, Thunder Star has won 2 of only 3 races at that track — a record that is frankly extraordinary. Most horses are lucky to win at any single course. To win two-thirds of your races at one venue suggests the place suits this horse in ways that are hard to fully explain, whether that is the track's shape, the ground it tends to produce, or simply familiarity. The last of those wins came on 30 March 2025, about fourteen months ago, which is why the current winless run of six races does not yet feel like cause for alarm.

That run of six without a win includes a couple of second-place finishes, so Thunder Star has not gone cold entirely. The recent form reads 2-6-9-9-2-10 — patchy, certainly, but not a horse falling apart. Most of its career has been spent in Class 4 company, which sits comfortably in the middle tier of British racing, and jockey Lewis Edmunds has been the regular partner for most of that journey, riding in 24 of those races together for 3 wins.

Jessica Macey's yard has sent out 13 winners this season already, so the team is in form. If Thunder Star lines up again at Doncaster on a wet afternoon, it would be a brave person to dismiss it entirely.