Percy's Lad

The other thing that gets him firing is dry ground. On fast or firm conditions he has won 2 from 6 races, a 33% win rate that is comfortably better than his overall record. He also hits his best form over a mile and one or two furlongs — at that trip he has won 2 from 5 races, which is 40%, a genuinely impressive conversion rate at the level he is running. When the three factors align — Chester, fast ground, the right distance — he becomes a serious proposition.

His regular partner Richard Kingscote has been aboard for 3 of those 4 career wins, and the pair clicked from the very start. At Great Yarmouth in April 2022, Kingscote described Percy's Lad doing it well and being entitled to win on the strength of his younger form — high praise, and it proved accurate. When the horse won at Chester in May 2024, his trainer Claire Kubler was quick to credit a great ride, and noted that Percy's Lad had already shown at the same track a year earlier that he could handle an awkward draw. That kind of track intelligence in a horse is rare and useful.

He has not won in his last six races, and his most recent Chester success was over two years ago, so questions about whether that level is still within reach are fair. But the Kubler yard has sent out 34 winners already this season — this is a team in form — and the trainer has spoken about Percy's Lad running particularly well at Newmarket shortly before a Chester return, suggesting the horse himself is in good health and possibly more settled in his temperament than before. At eight, he is an experienced campaigner who knows what he likes. Whether he can find it one more time at the track he loves is the question.