Earls

Start with Roscommon. On that track in the west of Ireland, Earls has won 3 times from just 5 races. That's 3 wins from 5 — a 60% win rate at a single venue, which for a horse that wins roughly 1 in 6 across its whole career is a staggering difference. Racecourses have personalities: different bends, different cambers, different drains. Some horses simply click with a track in a way that's hard to explain but impossible to ignore. Earls clearly clicks with Roscommon, and its last win came there on 1 September 2025, just eleven months ago.

Add wet ground to the equation and the case gets stronger still. On soft or muddy ground, Earls has won 3 from 11 races — just over 1 in every 4 — noticeably better than its overall record. This is a horse that comes alive when conditions get testing, the kind that others are slowing down in just as Earls is finding its stride. That combination of a favourite track and a favourite type of ground is about as clear a signal as racing gives you.

The yard behind it is Gavin Cromwell's operation in Navan, County Meath — a team that has sent out 96 winners this season alone, so this is not a horse sitting in a sleepy corner of a quiet yard. It is part of an operation that clearly knows what it's doing. Gary Carroll has ridden Earls in 24 of its races and won 5 of them together — roughly 1 in every 5 — a partnership that has produced the best of the horse's career, including a win in a top-level Class 2 race at Haydock Park back in April 2024, the kind of result that confirms Earls can mix it at a serious level when conditions suit.

Recent form shows three consecutive second-place finishes, and Earls raced just yesterday. The wins have dried up over the last six outings, but a horse that finishes second three times in a row is not a horse that has fallen apart — it is a horse that keeps knocking on the door.