Raft Up

His career record reads 6 wins and 16 places from 38 races — that's a win rate of around 16%, or roughly 1 in every 6 races. What makes that more impressive is how consistent he's been on normal ground, where the numbers sharpen considerably: 5 wins from 20 races on a standard surface, which works out to 1 in every 4. He's not a horse that needs unusual conditions to perform — he just needs the track to ride normally, and then he turns up. The fact that he does most of his racing at Class 6, the entry level of the sport, tells you he's a horse competing at the bread-and-butter end of racing, but within that world he's a genuine competitor rather than a journeyman making up the numbers.

Bethell described him during a stable tour last September as "a little dude and as solid as a rock" — and that phrase captures something real about how he's been campaigned. He won three times in 2025, including at Doncaster in June, before a run of disappointing form prompted his trainer to give him a break. That kind of honest assessment — recognising when a horse has simply had too many races and needs rest rather than more entries — is often what separates a well-managed horse from one that just fades away. He works equally well on the all-weather surface as on turf, which gives Bethell plenty of flexibility about where to run him.

Joanna Mason has ridden him most often, partnering him in 8 of his 38 races for 1 win together. That's a modest 12% win rate as a combination, though the Newcastle partnership tells a better story. With the yard sending out 18 winners this season and Raft Up back racing just this week, it's clear that little dude is very much back in business.