Mcgregors Charge

The raw numbers are modest. One win from 18 races is a win rate of around 6%, or roughly 1 in every 18 outings. Seven placed finishes alongside that single victory tell a more nuanced story, though — this is a horse that competes, that finishes in the frame, that makes punters sweat before ultimately finishing second or third rather than first. The recent form figures of 5-7 followed by a couple of gaps and then a 2 and a 3 suggest a horse finding its feet again after a quiet spell, which at least offers something to work with.

What makes the partnership with regular jockey Ben Godfrey so curious is that across 12 races together, the pair have yet to win. That is not a criticism — plenty of horses go through long losing runs with perfectly good jockeys — but it is a striking statistic, and it means that Mcgregors Charge's one moment of glory came without its most frequent rider in the saddle. Whether Godfrey was on board at Perth on that August afternoon is not recorded here, but the broader pattern is one of near-misses rather than triumphs.

Trainer Kayley Woollacott operates out of Woolminstone in Somerset and has had a productive season, sending out 16 winners. Her yard clearly knows how to get a horse ready to run well, and Mcgregors Charge has been a regular presence in Class 5 races — the bread-and-butter level of the sport — winning once from 13 attempts at that level, which works out at roughly 1 in 13. That single Perth success remains the career highlight, and with the horse having raced just yesterday, Woollacott is clearly still finding places to aim it. Eight years old, one win, and still turning up. There is something in that worth admiring.