Prince Imperial

His most productive partnership has been with jockey Beau Morgan, and those numbers are striking: 3 wins from just 6 races together, meaning they have won exactly half their races as a partnership. That is an unusually high ratio and suggests the two have a real understanding. Finding a jockey a horse responds to is one of the quiet arts of training, and on this evidence the combination works.

His last win came at Warwick in April 2025, where trainer Olly Murphy noted he had improved steadily and was beginning to look like a genuine staying horse — one that gets better the further he goes. Murphy flagged that a step up in distance on fast, dry ground could bring out even more improvement. That kind of late-career development in a nine-year-old is genuinely interesting; some horses take years to find their ideal conditions, and when they do, they can keep winning well into old age.

The current run of six races without a win will not be lost on the team. He finished seventh most recently and was pulled up or well beaten in several of those runs, which suggests he has hit a flat patch. But trainer Richard Hughes has spoken about keeping him active through the winter on artificial surfaces — the all-weather tracks that race year-round — where Prince Imperial has shown he is reliable. With smaller fields expected in the longer distance races after Christmas, the plan seems to be to find him a race where the numbers work in his favour rather than force him into tougher spots. At nine, the strategy is less about ambition and more about placing him cleverly — and on his day, he is still more than capable of winning.