Cavolo Nero

The career so far has two clear highlights. The first win came at Southwell in January 2025, a useful moment for any horse to get off the mark in winter conditions. The second, and more recent, arrived at Goodwood in May 2025 — a genuinely lovely track on the South Downs where winning tends to mean something. Goodwood is a demanding, undulating circuit that finds out horses quickly, so landing a race there is no small thing.

Most of Cavolo Nero's work has been done at Class 4 level — a solid middle tier of British racing, not the glamour end but competitive enough that you cannot simply run through it. The record there reads 1 win from 5 races, which again reinforces the picture: a horse that places more often than it wins, but keeps turning up.

James Ferguson trains this horse out of Newmarket, the heartland of British flat racing, and his yard has sent out 26 winners already this season — a strong operation in full flow. Daniel Muscutt rides Cavolo Nero most often, and their record together is 1 win from 5 races, a 20% win rate that mirrors the horse's overall profile almost exactly. There is consistency there, even if it is not electrifying.

The recent form — finishing second and third in the last two runs — suggests the horse is in decent nick right now, having bounced back from a tricky patch in the middle of those six runs when it finished eighth and sixth. Last raced 25 days ago and still active, Cavolo Nero looks like a horse searching for the right moment to get its head back in front. Whether that comes soon will depend on where Ferguson pitches it next, but this is a horse that rarely embarrasses itself and has already shown it can win on a big stage.