Take Charge Star

That sole win came at Gowran Park on 2nd September 2025, and the distance tells an interesting story. Over seven furlongs to a mile, Take Charge Star has won 1 from 3 races — a win rate of 33%, or roughly 1 in 3 — which is a sharp improvement on its overall record. That suggests the horse has a sweet spot, and when the yard — sorry, when the team gets the trip right, it becomes a genuinely different proposition. Gowran Park is a sharp, turning track that rewards handy, nippy horses, and clearly something clicked there.

The trainer is J P Murtagh, operating out of Coolaghknock Glebe in County Kildare. Murtagh, of course, was one of the finest jockeys of his generation before moving into training, and his yard has sent out 54 winners already this season — a serious number that tells you this is not a small-time operation. Having a horse like Take Charge Star in a yard firing at that rate matters, because it means the team around this horse knows exactly what it takes to get a horse ready to win.

The recent form string — 8-5-2-6-1-3 reading most recent first — shows a horse that dipped to an eighth and a sixth before that Gowran win, then followed it up with a second and a fifth. It raced just one day ago, so we're watching this story unfold in real time. Whether that Gowran victory turns out to be the moment everything clicked, or just one good day among many, the next few months for this three-year-old should be revealing.