King Ulanda

The yard itself is in excellent shape, having sent out 43 winners already this season, so King Ulanda is operating in an environment that clearly knows how to get a horse to the track in form. His most regular partner in the saddle is Toby Wynne, and that combination has clicked: two wins from five rides together, which works out to 40% — an unusually high ratio that suggests the pair suit each other well.

What makes King Ulanda particularly interesting is the picture that emerges from the trainer's own words. The team is clear that he is a horse who wants fast, dry ground and a sharp two miles — conditions that suit a horse with natural speed rather than one that grinds away on slow, muddy tracks. A difficult run at Haydock earlier in the year, where he made jumping errors and stopped quickly, was chalked up to ground that didn't suit him rather than any loss of ability. Encouragingly, his handlers felt he had been improving before that blip, and the Uttoxeter win this week suggests they were right.

His record at Class 4 level — the bread-and-butter tier of jump racing — shows 1 win from 11 races at that grade, which is a modest 9%. But that figure is almost certainly distorted by runs on unsuitable ground or in the wrong conditions. Strip those out, and you have a horse whose recent form tells a very different story. First career win at Huntingdon in May 2024, back in the winner's enclosure at Uttoxeter in July 2026 — King Ulanda is a horse who rewards patience, and right now, with summer ground and a trainer in fine fettle, conditions are setting up nicely for him.