Roman Dragon

What makes Roman Dragon genuinely interesting is the gap between his excellence at Chester and his struggles elsewhere. Across his career, he has won only 6 races from 41 attempts — a win rate of roughly 1 in 7 — but nearly all of those wins have come at one track. Palmer has explained the horse's quirk with the kind of detail that speaks to real knowledge: Roman Dragon loses focus in straight lines, gets distracted by the crowd, but his nimble, balanced frame is perfectly suited to Chester's tight, turning course. When he does win at the top level, it tends to be at Chester too. Last summer he won the Queensferry, one of the track's prestigious races, and Palmer has already set his sights on defending that title.

His recent form tells a different story. After a strong summer 2025, Roman Dragon has not won in his last six races, though he has picked up three places. He typically races in Class 2 company, where he wins roughly 1 in 16 races — a sign that he is genuinely struggling at that level. Jockey Oisin Murphy, who rides him most often, has won 2 of 6 races aboard him, a respectable 33 per cent win rate. With a higher rating than he has ever won off before, according to Palmer, Roman Dragon remains an interesting horse, but his future likely depends on staying at Chester and avoiding the kind of elevated company that would take him away from the one place where he has learned to truly dominate.