Gazelle d'Or

The Curragh has been Gazelle d'Or's spiritual home, with three wins from nine visits there. That course record is respectable enough, though the troubling detail is how long it has been since the last success: a victory on 27 September 2025 that now sits 13 months in the past. Since then, the horse has raced six times without winning, though it has shown enough to pick up places — two fourth-place finishes, two seconds, and a thirteenth — suggesting it remains competitive at a certain level, just not quite sharp enough to break through.

Trainer M C Grassick, based at the Curragh, has kept Gazelle d'Or ticking over, and the yard itself is doing respectable work this season with six winners to its name. The partnership with regular rider Danny Sheehy, however, has not clicked: seven races together have brought nothing but places. Sometimes a horse and jockey simply do not gel, and this looks like one of those cases. With the horse active and back in action just a day ago, the real question now is whether better ground conditions might spark the kind of form that made it a winner two years ago. Without that soft surface to work with, Gazelle d'Or looks like a horse grinding out a modest middle-distance career.