Toy Soldier

The two wins have come at very different venues. The first arrived at Musselburgh in August 2024, and the second — most recently — at Leicester on 27 May 2025. That Leicester win came over seven furlongs to a mile, which is where Toy Soldier does its best work. In races over that distance, the horse has won 2 from 14, a win rate of 14% — roughly 1 in every 7 — which is a noticeably better return than its overall record suggests. In other words, get Toy Soldier over the right trip and it becomes a different proposition entirely.

The trainer is Maurice Andrew Ahern, based out of Mallow in County Cork, and the yard has sent out five winners already this season, so there is form behind the operation. Liam Wright has been the most regular jockey, but the partnership has not clicked yet — five races together, no wins. That is the kind of statistic that makes the yard — sorry, that makes a trainer think hard about whether to stick or twist.

What is harder to overlook is that Toy Soldier has not won in its last six races, and when pitched into Class 4 company — a step up in competitiveness — it has gone 0 from 6. That is a clear pattern: the horse can win, but it needs conditions to be right. The recent form has been more encouraging than those earlier blank runs — two second-place finishes in the last few outings suggest it is at least knocking on the door again. Raced just a day ago, Toy Soldier is clearly being kept busy, and with the right race over the right trip, another win is not out of the question. It just needs everything to fall into place.