Royal Rhyme

Those wins have come at serious venues. He landed a top-level Class 1 race at Ayr in September 2023, followed it up with a Class 2 at Goodwood in August of the same year, and then — perhaps most impressively — won a Class 1 at Sandown in May 2024. That Sandown race was the Brigadier Gerard Stakes, one of the more prestigious midsummer prizes in Britain, and Burke has spoken openly about going back there this season. When a trainer targets the same race twice, it tells you something: they believe the horse belongs at that level. Burke has also mentioned that Royal Rhyme has run respectably in two Champion Stakes, the biggest race of the British autumn for horses of his type.

Jockey Clifford Lee has been the man in the saddle for all five wins, and the partnership across 17 races together has produced a win rate of 29% — winning roughly 3 in every 10 races they've run together. After Ayr, Lee described getting Royal Rhyme to relax as the key to the performance, saying the horse hit the line strong once he picked up. After Goodwood, Lee was direct about the ceiling: he called Royal Rhyme "definitely a Listed class and possibly a Group horse in the making," with a caveat — the horse needs to learn to settle before he can get away with longer trips.

What makes the current moment interesting is the combination of rust and potential. Royal Rhyme hasn't won in his last six races, the most recent run coming just yesterday, and his last victory was over two years ago at Sandown. But his trainer, whose yard has sent out 145 winners this season alone, doesn't sound like a man writing the horse off. Burke is pointing toward the autumn, expecting soft ground to arrive and believing that when it does, this horse could yet win at the very highest level. The form dip looks like a chapter, not a conclusion.