Blakey Boy

Blakey Boy is trained by Ewan Whillans, tucked away in Hawick in the Scottish Borders, and this is a yard that clearly knows what it's doing right now — 28 winners sent out this season is a serious return for a smaller operation, and Blakey Boy has been doing his bit. The horse got off the mark for the first time at Hexham in April 2025, and has since built on that, most recently winning at Kelso just four weeks ago. Kelso is practically local for a Hawick-based yard, and there's something fitting about a Scottish Borders horse winning on a track that sits right in the heart of that same country.

Craig Nichol has been the regular partner in the saddle, and that combination is working well. In six races together, Nichol has steered Blakey Boy to 2 wins — a win rate of 1 in 3, which is genuinely strong and well above what the horse achieves with other riders. That kind of continuity between horse and jockey matters more than people realise; a jockey who knows how a horse travels and where it finds its best stride is worth a great deal.

The one honest caveat is that Blakey Boy has spent most of his career competing at Class 4 level — the middle tier of the sport rather than the top end — and at that level has won just 1 from 10 races, or 10%, which is a modest return. The recent wins suggest he may be hitting a better patch of form than those numbers imply, but he hasn't yet been asked to step up and prove himself against classier rivals. For now, though, he's a horse in form, with a yard in form, riding a partnership that clearly clicks — and he raced just yesterday, so this story is very much still being written.