King Of Charm

His first win came at Wolverhampton in September 2023, and his second — and most recent — at Sandown Park in August 2024. That Sandown success is now 21 months in the rear-view mirror, and his last six races have read 9th, 8th, 8th, 10th, 6th, and 2nd. The second place is the glimmer of hope in that sequence, but the rest suggest a horse who is finding it increasingly hard to land a telling blow.

The partnership with jockey Darragh Keenan is one worth watching, if only because it raises questions. Eight races together and not a single win — a clean 0 from 8. That is not necessarily anyone's fault; horses and riders can be well-matched without the results going their way. But it is the kind of record that makes you wonder whether a change might unlock something.

He runs most often at Class 4 level, which sits in the middle tier of British racing — not the headline events, but not the bottom rung either. At that level he has won just 1 from 9, so the competition is finding him out more often than not. His trainer Martin Dunne operates out of Newmarket, the heartland of British flat racing, and has sent out 20 winners this season — a yard clearly capable of getting horses to perform. King Of Charm, though, has not been among the contributors.

He raced just yesterday, which means he is very much in active training and his team clearly still believe there is a race to be won with him. The honest assessment is that he is a horse who has shown he can win — twice, at decent tracks — but is currently in a lean spell that has now stretched to six races without a victory. Whether the Sandown form from last summer is still in there somewhere is the question worth asking.