Glasses Up

The story of how he got here is worth telling. When Mike Smith spotted him at the sales, he was given a budget of around £8,000 to £10,000. He rang the team, told them he needed to go to the full limit for a horse that hadn't even raced yet. There were raised eyebrows — that's a lot of faith in an unproven animal. He was even bought with an entry for the Derby. The horse has since won eight races for the yard and accumulated £121,000 in prize-money. Safe to say the budget was well spent, and the team have since turned down offers to sell him.

Glasses Up is at his best over a mile and three furlongs to a mile and a half, winning 4 of his 22 races at those distances — roughly 1 in every 5 races at the trip, which is a strong return. He also has a particular fondness for fast, dry ground, winning 2 from 7 races in those conditions — nearly 1 in 3. His overall record of 5 wins and 17 places from 65 races (an 8% win rate) tells you he isn't the most prolific winner, but he has been competitive far more often than that raw figure suggests, finishing in the frame in more than a third of his career starts.

His regular partner Paddy Mathers is still hunting a first win together from 15 attempts, though Mathers himself has spoken warmly about riding him, noting that the horse picks up well when the pace is genuine. Smith, for his part, has been eyeing a tilt at the Kilkerran Cup at Ayr's Gold Cup meeting as a target — and given that Glasses Up last won there as recently as May 2025, that ambition doesn't look far-fetched at all. He raced just yesterday, still active, still competing. At eleven, most horses are long retired. Glasses Up apparently hasn't read that memo.