Bomb Squad

The most interesting chapter in that story is written at Southwell. Four wins from 18 races there — winning roughly 1 in every 4 and a half trips — makes it a genuine course specialist at a track where plenty of horses never win at all. Something about the place suits Bomb Squad, whether it is the surface, the tight turns, or simply the level of competition it meets there. The most recent of those Southwell wins came just two months ago in April, and with a race logged only yesterday, this horse is right in the thick of its season.

The current form is the kind that makes a trainer feel quietly confident. Two wins from the last six races, with the sequence reading 6-3-1-2-6-1 — the most recent first — shows a horse that finishes close far more often than it wins, but keeps knocking on the door. Those middle placings suggest consistency rather than decline, and a horse that has won 9 career races at the age of eight clearly has not run out of ideas.

John Mackie trains the yard from Church Broughton in Derbyshire, and his team has sent out 16 winners already this season — so Bomb Squad is operating within a yard that knows how to get a horse ready to win. Cieren Fallon has ridden it nine times, winning twice, which is a win rate of 22% — roughly 1 in every 4 to 5 times in the saddle together. That is a solid partnership at this level.

Most of Bomb Squad's career has been spent at Class 6 — the everyday, bread-and-butter end of the sport — where it has won 7 of its 56 races at that level. It will never headline a big occasion, but for a horse racing week in, week out at this age, still winning races and still placing in more than half its starts, Bomb Squad is doing exactly what a reliable, durable racehorse should do.