Will The Wise

What makes Will The Wise genuinely interesting is his love of wet ground. On soft or muddy conditions, he has won 2 of his 3 races — a remarkable two-thirds win rate that stands out starkly against his overall record. This is not coincidence; this is a horse that performs a different class of racing when the ground cuts up. He is also a course specialist at Punchestown, where he has won 2 of his 3 races there. These are the kinds of details that matter to anyone who knows how to read a form: a horse with clear preferences that can be exploited.

Trained by Gavin Cromwell at Navan, a yard that has sent out 96 winners this season and clearly knows what it is doing, Will The Wise last won at Aintree six months ago. Cromwell has been deliberate about how the horse is campaigned, moving him back to two-and-a-half-mile races after questioning whether he truly stays longer distances, despite winning over nearly three miles in the past. That kind of tactical thinking — adjusting the race distance to suit a horse's strengths rather than forcing it — is the mark of a trainer who understands his charge. Keith Donoghue, his most frequent jockey, has partnered with him 9 times, winning 2 races together. After a recent effort at Cheltenham, Donoghue said the horse "ran a cracker" but met "a better one on the day" — the kind of observation that suggests Will The Wise is consistently competitive, just not always the best horse in the race.