Moroder

The key to understanding Moroder is simple: he is a spring horse who needs fast, dry ground to be at his best. Trainer Seamus Mullins is refreshingly blunt about it. Most horses can adapt; Moroder simply cannot. Wet or muddy conditions are not for him. So every season, Mullins works backwards from the spring, waits for the ground to firm up, and then sends him out when conditions are right. This season that meant Moroder did not appear until Christmas — partly because of a muscle injury earlier in the campaign — and by the time he lined up at Doncaster in March 2025, his trainer already knew the real Moroder had turned up. He won at 33-1. That is not luck; that is a trainer who knows his horse inside out.

Doncaster is clearly part of the plan rather than coincidence. Moroder has now won a top-tier Class 2 race there twice — in March 2023 and again in March 2025 — and Mullins points out that Doncaster's ground almost never gets heavy even in winter, which suits him perfectly. But the course where Moroder is most dominant is actually Exeter, where he has won 3 of his 6 races there — half of all his career wins, from just 6 visits. That kind of record at one track is the sort of thing punters remember for years.

Jockey James Best has been the regular partner throughout, riding him in 24 of his 30 races and winning 5 of them — just over 1 in every 5 rides together, which mirrors his career average almost exactly. That kind of consistency between horse and jockey matters, especially for a horse with very specific needs.

Moroder has not won in his last 6 races, and his most recent victory is now 15 months ago. But he raced just yesterday, finished third at Doncaster in December before that, and Mullins has already flagged the Grimthorpe Chase as the target — a race Moroder has won twice. At 12, on the right ground, at the right track, he remains genuinely dangerous.