Firefox

The headline number is almost absurd: three races at Down Royal, three wins. A 100% record at a track is rare enough in any sport, but in horse racing, where ground, draw, traffic, and sheer luck all conspire against you, it borders on the extraordinary. Down Royal seems to suit everything about Firefox — and the most recent of those wins came on 1 November 2025, confirming this is no faded affection for the place. The yard will be circling that course on the calendar every time entries open.

There is another layer to this story, and it involves the ground. On slightly soft going — that slightly damp, yielding surface where some horses struggle for grip and others absolutely thrive — Firefox has won all three times it has encountered it. Three from three. That is not a fluke; that is a horse built for those conditions. Put those two facts together and you have a horse that, on a soft day at Down Royal, has never been beaten.

Trained by Gordon Elliott at Longwood in Co Meath, Firefox is in one of the most powerful yards in Ireland — a team that has already sent out 209 winners this season alone. Jack Kennedy is the regular partner, riding nine of Firefox's 20 races, winning 2 of them, which works out at roughly 1 in every 4.5 rides together — solid, if not spectacular. The partnership has plenty of mileage left in it.

The one honest caveat: when Firefox has stepped up to the very top level of racing — Class 1, the elite tier — it has not yet won, going 0 from 3 at that grade. That tells you this is a horse that excels in its comfort zone rather than against the very best. Recent form of a win, two seconds, a fourth, and a sixth in the last six races shows a horse still firing, still placing, still turning up. At eight years old and with five months since that last Down Royal victory, the question is simply when the right race comes round again — and whether the ground is soft when it does.