Pop Star

The most striking detail is this: Pop Star has run 18 times at Class 4 level — the bread-and-butter tier where most horses like this are expected to pick up their wins — and has won precisely none of them. Zero from 18. That should make for a frustrating career, and yet here we are, with five wins on the board and one of them arriving just this week. The horse seems to find something extra when conditions or company shift, even if the standard Class 4 races have so far refused to play along.

That latest win came at Carlisle on 29 May 2026, and it is the most recent result in what has otherwise been a rough recent patch — the five runs before it produced finishes of 9th, 11th, 10th, 12th, and 11th, which is the kind of sequence that tests everyone's patience. The fact that Pop Star then turned up and won anyway is the sort of thing that keeps trainers believing. Iain Jardine, who runs a busy yard in Carrutherstown and has sent out 57 winners this season alone, clearly saw something worth persisting with.

Jockey Kieran O'Neill has been the regular partner, riding Pop Star in 12 of those 34 races and winning twice together — a win rate of about 1 in 6. That is actually slightly above the horse's overall average, which suggests the partnership works. The career started with a first win at Navan back in August 2023, and the horse has kept finding ways to add to the tally since, even when the form book suggests it has gone quiet.

At six years old and clearly still capable of winning — as this week proved — Pop Star is a good example of the kind of horse that rewards anyone willing to look past a string of mid-field finishes. The next win might be a long time coming, or it might be next week. That unpredictability, frustrating as it is, is exactly what makes a horse like this worth following.