Spy Chief

The four-year-old performs best over middle distances between five and six and a half furlongs, winning 1 of 7 races (roughly 14%) at those trips. It is at the top level — Class 1 races — that Spy Chief really struggles, winless from five attempts there. That gap between ability at smaller tracks and failure at the highest level is common enough, but it also means the horse is operating at or near its ceiling, a solid campaigner rather than a rising prospect. Robert Havlin, its regular jockey, has a better record aboard Spy Chief than the horse's overall figures suggest: winning 1 of 6 rides together (17%), which hints that the partnership works, even if the results have dried up in recent weeks. Trained by John and Thady Gosden at Newmarket, Spy Chief is part of a powerful operation that has sent out 140 winners already this season, though this horse has not been one of them since last June — a gap of 16 months that is starting to feel like a real dry spell.