Sugar Baby

The most eye-catching number in Sugar Baby's record is what happens on dry ground. In 12 races on fast, firm conditions, Sugar Baby has won 5 of them — that's a 42% win rate, more than double the career average. Contrast that with the class of race Sugar Baby typically enters: at Class 5, the most competitive everyday level, the record reads just 1 win from 19 races. That tells you something important — this is a horse that punches at a tough level day-to-day, so when conditions fall right, it becomes a very different proposition.

The most recent evidence came just this week. Sugar Baby won at Doncaster on 20 June 2026 — a timely reminder that, despite a couple of quiet runs in the middle of the current sequence, the spark is still very much there. That result snapped a run of three races where Sugar Baby finished well down the field, which makes it all the more impressive. Before that, there was a second-place finish, and now a win — recent form reading 1-5-7-8-7-2 from the latest race back, with the upturn arriving at exactly the right moment.

Peter Niven, who trains Sugar Baby from his yard in Barton-le-Street in North Yorkshire, has been in fine form this season with 12 winners already sent out. Jockey Alec Voikhansky has the strongest record in the saddle, winning 2 of their 8 races together — a 25% win rate, comfortably ahead of the horse's overall average. There's also a course to watch: at Redcar, Sugar Baby has won 2 from 6 races, which for a horse competing at this level represents a genuine local stronghold.

Sugar Baby's first career win came at Newcastle back in January 2022, and four and a half years on, this horse is still winning races. At a stage when plenty of horses have long since retired, that longevity and that Doncaster win this week make Sugar Baby genuinely worth following.