Kon Tiki

The horse broke its duck at Wolverhampton in December 2024 and has been building steadily ever since. The highlight so far is a Class 1 win at York on 16 May 2025 — and it is hard to overstate what that means. Class 1 races are the summit of British racing, the stages where the very best horses are supposed to dominate. Winning one as a relatively lightly raced 4-year-old signals that Kon Tiki belongs at the top table, not just making up the numbers.

The recent form figures — 1-1-1-7-2-4, reading from oldest to newest — tell an interesting story. Three wins on the bounce gave way to a brief dip, with a seventh and a second, before a fourth most recently. That fourth place still represents a placed finish, so it would be wrong to read too much into it, but it does suggest the horse may be finding life slightly tougher as rivals start to take it more seriously. That is the price of success.

Behind the scenes, Kon Tiki is trained by Jane Chapple-Hyam at her yard in Dalham, Suffolk — and this has been a productive season for the stable, with 24 winners already sent out. A trainer in that kind of form is one whose horses arrive at the track in good shape, which makes Kon Tiki's next run all the more worth watching. Still active and raced as recently as yesterday, this is a horse very much in the thick of its campaign.