Back In Black

The two wins tell the real story. Back In Black won at Great Yarmouth back in August 2024, then struck at Class 2 level—one of the top races in Britain—at Newbury in April 2025. That Newbury victory suggests the horse belongs in serious company, but it has now gone 16 months without another win, racking up six races without success most recently. The form line reads 4-10-2-2-3-4 across the last half-dozen outings: not disastrous—there are two second-place finishes in there—but the wins have dried up. Over those same six runs, Back In Black has finished in the placings four times but cannot seem to find the winner's enclosure again.

Distance matters here. Over 7 furlongs to a mile, the horse shows genuine form—2 wins from 10 races at that range, a 20% win rate that nearly doubles the overall record. Daniel Muscutt, the rider in most of the horse's races (2 wins from 10 together), seems to bring out something too. Trained by J R Fanshawe at Newmarket, a yard with 44 winners already this season, Back In Black has the infrastructure around it to find that third win, and the recent placement at Class 2 level proves it belongs there. Whether another breakthrough is coming depends entirely on whether Fanshawe can work out what changed between April 2025 and now—because the horse clearly has it somewhere.