King's Code

What makes King's Code particularly interesting is where it wins. Chester is a tight, quirky circuit that horses either love or hate, and King's Code clearly loves it — 2 wins from just 4 races there, including a victory as recently as this week. That's a 50% record at a track where most horses never win at all. Specialists like this are genuinely useful to follow, because the track does half the work for you. It also performs at a remarkable clip over 7 furlongs to a mile, winning 2 of just 4 races at those distances, and thrives when the ground is soft or muddy — 3 wins from 7 races on wet ground, a 43% rate that suggests it shifts through the gears when conditions get testing.

The horse is trained by David Evans, whose yard in Pandy, Monmouthshire has sent out 37 winners already this season — a yard clearly in excellent form. Jordan Williams, who rides King's Code most often, has won 2 of 7 races aboard the horse, roughly 1 in every 3.5 rides, a tidy partnership by any measure.

At six years old and still racing — it ran just yesterday — King's Code is in the form of its life. Three Class 2 wins in the space of nine months, with the most recent coming this very week, tells you this is not a horse on the slide. If anything, the form figures of 1-5-16 suggest a horse that bounced back sharply after a couple of quieter runs. Chester, soft ground, 7 furlongs: if those boxes get ticked together, King's Code is one of the most compelling names on any racecard.