Miss Willows

She is a 7-year-old who has now raced 27 times, winning 3 and finishing in the places 5 more times — so she has given her the yard something to cheer on 8 occasions in total, roughly 1 in every 3 trips out. Her sweet spot is a distance of 7 furlongs to a mile, where she has won all 3 of her races from 18 attempts at those trips — a win rate of 17%, or just under 1 in 6. That is meaningfully better than her overall record and tells you clearly that stretching her beyond a mile is not worth the effort.

Simon Whitaker trains her from his yard at Scarcroft in West Yorkshire, and the operation has sent out 4 winners already this season — a small but ticking yard that clearly knows what it is doing with a horse like this. Ben Sanderson, who rides her most often, has partnered her 7 times and won once together, a rate of around 1 in 7. That is modest, but the pairing at least has a winner on the board.

Most of Miss Willows' races have come at Class 6 level — the entry-level tier of British racing — and that is where her 3 wins have all arrived. There is no shame in that. Plenty of horses spend their careers racing above their level and never win at all; she competes where she can be competitive, and 3 wins from 16 Class 6 races (19%, nearly 1 in 5) reflects a horse that knows how to get her head in front when the conditions suit. Her most recent win came at Redcar in September 2025, and with her last run just yesterday she remains very much a horse in active training, not one being wound down. The Catterick record alone makes her worth watching the next time she heads back there.