El Cairos

The trainer Gordon Elliott, who has sent out 210 winners from his yard at Longwood this season, clearly sees something special in him. After the Thurles race, Elliott noted that El Cairos had jumped well and settled nicely in a slowly run race, but jockey Jack Kennedy felt he had not done enough to help the horse up the final jump — a mistake from the rider rather than the horse. What impressed Elliott was how El Cairos came right back at the fence afterwards, a sign of character. The trainer wanted a confidence-building race rather than a top-level contest before the Supreme, and the recent Gowran Park win suggests that strategy is working. Elliott has also made clear the horse is in good form and looking right, with one more run planned before a tilt at the Supreme at Cheltenham.

Jack Kennedy, El Cairos's regular rider, has won once from 5 races aboard him — a 20 per cent win rate. That single success came at Newbury in November 2024, his first career victory, and the partnership clearly needs more time to gel. But if the horse continues to bounce back from dud days as he did this week, and if Kennedy learns from mistakes like the one at Thurles, El Cairos could yet prove worth watching at Cheltenham.