Optician

What makes Optician genuinely interesting is what happens when he goes to Wolverhampton. Of his 5 career wins, 4 have come at that track alone — meaning he has won 4 times from just 11 visits there, a rate of roughly 1 in every 3 races. That is a remarkable number. For context, most horses win far less than 1 in 5 races across their careers, so winning 1 in 3 at a specific track suggests something real is going on, whether it is the shape of the circuit, the surface, or simply that he has learned to love the place. His first career win came there on 5 December 2023, and he has kept going back and kept winning.

He is also a horse who is most at home on normal ground conditions — not too wet, not too dry — and on that surface he has won 4 of 18 races, or roughly 1 in every 4 or 5. That is a meaningfully better return than his overall average and suggests his trainer Michael Herrington, based at Willoughton in Lincolnshire, knows exactly when to aim him. Herrington's yard has sent out 33 winners this season alone, so this is a trainer operating with confidence and purpose.

There is one puzzle worth flagging. David Allan has ridden Optician 11 times and they have not won together once. Given that Optician clearly has the ability to win — he did so at Doncaster as recently as four weeks ago — that is a curious blank that racing fans would certainly notice. His recent form reads 5th, 1st, 10th, 4th in his last four completed runs, which is the kind of inconsistency that makes him tricky to predict but exciting to follow. He competes mostly at Class 4 level, one rung below the top tier, and has won just 1 of 12 races at that level — his wins tend to come when conditions and course align perfectly. When they do, he delivers.