New Image

The career record reads four wins and nine places from 19 races, a win rate of around 21% — roughly one in every five races. That is a solid number, but what stands out is the quality of those wins. He got off the mark at Southwell in March 2024, which was a perfectly respectable start, and then within five months he had stepped up to beat smart company at Ascot's famous Shergar Cup meeting. Going from a first win to a top-level success in one summer is not a small thing.

The tricky part of the picture is what has happened since. He has not won in his last six races, a run stretching back almost two years to that Ascot success. His recent form figures — 11-7-5-13-3-6 — show a horse that has been knocking around the top half of competitive fields without quite finding the front. A finish of third suggests the ability is still there; an eleventh suggests the odd bad day. For a horse operating mainly at Class 2 level, where he has won 1 from 6 races (roughly one in six), margins between success and disappointment are always slim.

The encouraging news is that O'Meara's yard is in fine fettle — 101 winners on the board this season alone, which is the kind of firepower that means horses get targeted smartly rather than just kept busy. The trainer's plan for New Image sounds precise: a quiet first run at Musselburgh to blow away the cobwebs, then build toward the Victoria Cup or a race over seven furlongs at Ascot or a sharp mile at York. New Image also has a strong record on normal ground, winning two of his four races in those conditions — half of all his appearances on a fair surface have ended in victory. If the ground plays ball and the form clicks back into place, he is exactly the kind of horse capable of reminding everyone why he was a Class 2 winner not so long ago.