Booyea

The bright spot in Booyea's record is what happens when jockey Gavin Ryan gets the ride. In 13 races together, Ryan has steered the horse to three wins — a 23% win rate that stands well above Booyea's overall average. That kind of success rate with one rider often points to a partnership that works, a jockey who understands how to settle the horse or bring it into a race at just the right moment. Trainer Thomas Gibney, based at Trim in County Meath, has found a useful formula with Booyea too: the horse loves normal ground conditions and wins roughly one in every four races on going like that, compared to its overall average. At distances between seven furlongs and a mile, Booyea has shown similar form. These are not huge samples — four races over good ground, four races at that distance — but they sketch out a profile of a horse that performs best on a sound surface and over moderate distances. Whether Gibney's yard can engineer a return to the winner's enclosure after such a long drought remains to be seen.