Tricky Tel

What makes Tricky Tel genuinely interesting is his complete mastery of Chester. In five races at the tight, oval track—a course that catches out inexperienced horses and exposes weaknesses—he has won three of them. His first career victory came there on 8 May 2025, and he returned to score a second Class 2 win just one week later. That back-to-back success at the highest level in early summer showed he was not a one-hit wonder. He has raced there once since and won again, most recently in mid-June. Three wins from five races at any track is remarkable; at Chester, a place that demands balance and precision, it suggests a horse with genuine tactical intelligence.

The wrinkle is that Tricky Tel has been sidelined by soundness issues—the kind of small physical problems that plague young racehorses and interrupt their development. His trainer, Hugo Palmer, one of Britain's most respected operators based at Malpas in Cheshire, has made it clear the horse will not race again this year. There is talk of gelding him when he returns in spring, a common step taken with colts who show promise but remain a bit headstrong or unpredictable. On the track, jockey Silvestre De Sousa observed that despite his compact size, Tricky Tel has real quality and travelled well even in a chaotic race. The sense from the yard is that he is still quite raw—he may even prefer a slightly longer distance than five furlongs—and that maturity will be his friend. Right now, he is a horse with Chester figured out, but the bigger picture of his career is still being written.