Captain Pickles

The turnaround began at Wolverhampton on 30 January 2026, when Captain Pickles finally got off the mark. It has since returned to that same venue and won again, making Wolverhampton something of a second home. Two wins from six races there — winning 1 in every 3 visits — is a genuinely useful record at a track where plenty of horses turn up and go through the motions. Some horses simply suit a particular track's shape and surface, and Captain Pickles appears to be one of them.

The partnership with jockey Stevie Donohoe is worth paying attention to. Three wins from six rides together means they have won half the time they have teamed up — a remarkable ratio that suggests the horse responds particularly well to this rider. That kind of chemistry between horse and jockey is not always easy to explain, but it shows up clearly in the results.

Normal ground conditions are where Captain Pickles does its best work — four wins from 14 races on a standard surface, winning just under 1 in every 3 times in those conditions. The preferred trip of a mile and a furlong to a mile and two furlongs also tells you something: this is a horse that stays well enough to make its run count over a genuine distance. Two wins from five races at that range, a 40% win rate, is one of the stronger single statistics in the profile.

Captain Pickles competes mostly at Class 6, the entry level of British racing, and raced just yesterday — still very much in the middle of an active campaign. The Culhane and Barclay yard has sent out six winners this season, and Captain Pickles is clearly among their most reliable contributors right now. For a horse that spent most of last year finding its way, that is quite the development.