Defence Witness

The Catterick record is the headline. Two wins from five races there is genuinely impressive — that's winning 40% of the time at a specific track, which is the sort of number that makes punters sit up. His first career win came at Catterick in November 2023, and he returned to claim another there as recently as January 2026. Horses that keep coming back to the same track and keep performing are valuable things. They're not flukes; they've found somewhere that suits them.

Soft, wet ground is the other key. He has won 2 of his 8 races on that surface — 25%, or 1 in 4 — which is a markedly better return than his overall record suggests. Sam England, who trains him out of Guiseley in West Yorkshire, has been candid about this. He knows the horse wants decent ground to be at his best, but the data shows he's no pushover when it cuts up either. England has had a productive season with 49 winners from the yard, and Defence Witness fits the profile of the kind of reliable, place-finding performer a busy stable relies on.

His recent form reads 6-2-7-2-1-2, which tells an interesting story — the 1 (a win) sandwiched between placed efforts suggests he's very much in the mix whenever conditions are right, even if he occasionally runs flat. He races almost exclusively at Class 5 level, the lower end of the scale, where he's won 3 of 15 races. That's a 20% win rate at his level — 1 in 5 — which is a solid return. Ryan Mania takes the ride most often, winning together once from eight attempts.

He raced just yesterday, so he's in the thick of things right now. For anyone watching at Catterick on a wet afternoon, Defence Witness is the name to look out for.