Fast Steps

Rod Millman is based in Kentisbeare, Devon, and has sent out 42 winners this season alone, so Fast Steps is one piece of a busy and productive operation. The trainer's son, Patrick Millman, takes the ride most often — 11 races together, one win — and by all accounts has a good feel for keeping the horse's mind on the job. That matters, because Fast Steps is the sort of horse who needs humoring rather than pushing.

The numbers tell a story of a horse who shows up more than he wins. Three wins from 40 races is a win rate of around 1 in every 13 attempts, though on fast, dry ground the picture improves: 2 wins from 13 races on those conditions works out to roughly 1 in every 6, which is a meaningfully better record and suggests the ground does matter, whatever anyone says publicly. Most of his racing has come at Class 4 level — solid, competitive racing without being the very top tier — and he's won 2 of his 24 races at that level, which is modest but honest.

He hasn't won in his last six races, and his most recent victory came at Newbury in July 2024, nearly two years ago now. But he's not fading — he finished third at Windsor just last week, behind a horse called Seventy, which Millman described as a good run. His recent form reads 3-3-7-4-9-5, and the bookends of that sequence — two thirds — suggest he's back somewhere close to his better self after a disappointing 2025 season and a winter break that seems to have done him good. Fast Steps may not be winning right now, but he's close enough to the frame that another victory wouldn't come as a surprise.