Cloth Of Gold

That one win came at Newcastle in October 2025, and Charlie Johnston's team speak about it with real warmth — he won nicely, they say, and the feeling is that he has not yet had the chance to show his ceiling. When a trainer describes a horse as "unexposed," it means the sport has not seen the best of him yet. Injuries have kept his race count low, and low race counts make it hard to know exactly how good a horse truly is. That uncertainty can actually work in a horse's favour — other trainers and their teams have less to go on when working out how to beat him.

Johnston himself is based at Middleham Moor in North Yorkshire and has been in remarkable form this season, sending out 131 winners — a number that reflects a yard operating at the very top of its game. Cloth Of Gold's best distance appears to be somewhere between a mile and three furlongs and a mile and four furlongs, where he has won 1 from 6 races, or roughly one in every six attempts at those trips. At the Class 4 level where he has mostly competed — solid, mid-tier races — he has won 1 from 3, which works out to one in every three, a respectable conversion rate if he can stay sound.

The plan, as things stand, is to build towards Glorious Goodwood in the summer, one of the most celebrated meetings in British racing. That is an ambitious target, and it tells you the yard believes there is a better horse in here than the record currently suggests. Whether Cloth Of Gold can stay healthy long enough to prove it is the central question — but if he does, a horse whose best days have genuinely been interrupted by injury rather than ability could be one worth keeping an eye on across the summer.