Reel Power

Almost all of Reel Power's career has been spent at Class 6 level, which is the entry-level tier of British racing — the kind of races designed to give horses a chance of winning rather than testing them against the best. Even there, the record reads 1 win from 18 races, a win rate of just 6%, or roughly 1 in every 18. The one area where there's a flicker of something better is over distances of 7 furlongs to a mile, where the record improves to 1 win from 6 races — that's 17%, or roughly 1 in every 6. It's still modest, but it's noticeably sharper than the overall picture, and it's where that Brighton win came from.

Jockey Shane Kelly has partnered Reel Power five times without finding the winner's enclosure together, going 0 from 5 as a combination. That's a small sample, but it hasn't produced a breakthrough yet. The horse is trained by Paddy Butler, whose yard in East Chiltington in East Sussex has sent out 4 winners this season — so it's a small but functioning operation, not a yard that has given up on results. The fact that Reel Power is still racing regularly suggests the team believes there's a race to be won somewhere. Whether Brighton on a summer afternoon might eventually deliver a second chapter to match July 2023 remains the lingering hope.