Newyorkstateofmind

Ruth Carr's yard in Stillington, North Yorkshire, has been in excellent shape this season — 56 winners sent out — and she clearly knows where to place this horse to give him his best chance. He tends to run in Class 5 races, the bread-and-butter level of the sport, where he has won 3 times from 25 starts. That is a 12% win rate, or roughly 1 in every 8 at that level, which is noticeably better than his overall record and confirms Carr is getting the placement right. His jockey James Sullivan has partnered him 31 times — a significant chunk of his career — and the pair have won together 3 times, a rate of about 1 in 10.

Two things seem to matter a great deal to Newyorkstateofmind: the surface under his feet and the track he is running at. Carr has noted that on grass, he really needs fast, dry ground; on softer turf, he simply does not fire. That explains why six of his nine career wins have come on all-weather tracks, where the surface stays consistent whatever the weather throws at it. At Hamilton Park he has won 2 of his 6 races, which for a horse with this win rate represents a genuine fondness for the place. His last victory came at Newcastle in September 2024 — now 22 months ago — and his recent form reads 8-8-6-2-12-12, suggesting he is well off the boil.

He raced just yesterday, so he is clearly still a busy and active campaigner. Carr admitted he was a touch disappointing on his seasonal return at Wolverhampton, but she has already identified a race at Thirsk as the next logical target. Jockey Ray Dawson has spoken warmly about him, calling him honest and genuine — the kind of horse that gives everything when the gap appears. Whether that effort translates into a first win in nearly two years may depend, as it so often has, on whether the ground comes up right.