Copper And Five

His trainer Ruth Carr, who runs a busy yard in Stillington, North Yorkshire — one that has produced 56 winners already this season — knows this horse well enough to have a loose schedule for him in her head. He tends to come good on his second or third run of a campaign, she says, so the early races are more about tuning him up than expecting a result. When he does find form, it tends to stick. His last win came at Beverley in May 2025, a track he clearly suited, and the story of that day is worth telling: jockey Joanna Mason's saddle slipped on the way to the start, had to be re-saddled at the line, and the pair still went out and battled all the way to the winning post. There is something likeable about a horse that wins in spite of the chaos around him.

Mason is his regular partner — they have raced together 24 times, winning twice, roughly 1 in every 12 races. That is a long working relationship by any measure, and it shows in the way she rides him. At Doncaster she changed tactics entirely, letting him stride on over a shorter trip rather than being held up, and it clicked. He is a horse that needs to be ridden with a bit of thought.

At ten years old, he is not getting any younger, and his last six races have produced no wins — form reading 8-6-4-2-2-10, though the pair of second-place finishes in there suggest he is still finding his way into the argument. His owner bred him, and Carr has said he will simply head home to the farm when the time comes. Until then, he is happy, sound and still competitive at his level — Class 5 races, the bread-and-butter tier of British racing. That might sound modest, but showing up, racing honestly and going home in one piece for ten years is its own kind of achievement.