John Ingles looks back at some of the significant events of the racing year.
Bittersweet year for Aga Khan Studs
Racing lost one of its most recognisable, successful and enduring figures with the death in February at the age of 88 of His Highness the Aga Khan. However, it was largely business as usual for his bloodstock operation, with his horses continuing to race under the Aga Khan Studs banner managed by his daughter Princess Zahra. What a year it turned it out to be for the famous green and red colours.
Still to make his debut when his owner died, three-year-old colt Daryz developed into a top-class colt by the autumn, winning the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, a race the Aga Khan had won four times during his lifetime. But even more successful was Daryz’s older stablemate Calandagan in a terrific campaign for their trainer Francis-Henri Graffard who became champion trainer in France for the first time.
Calandagan was the first horse since Brigadier Gerard to win the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Champion Stakes in the same season before also becoming the first overseas winner of the Japan Cup for thirty years.
Willie Mullins retains his champion jumps trainer title in Britain
After another ten winners at the Cheltenham Festival which matched his own record, Willie Mullins was in position to launch another springtime assault on the title of champion jumps trainer in Britain which he had secured the year before.
As in 2024, a Grand National victory helped his cause, this time saddling the first three home at Aintree, with son Patrick leading home the previous year’s winner I Am Maximus and Grangeclare West aboard 33/1-shot Nick Rockett (replay below).
Just like the year before, the Scottish Grand National a week later fell to Mullins too, with Captain Cody getting the better of stablemate Klarc Kent. That left things all to play for going into the final day of the season at Sandown where this time it was Dan Skelton rather than Paul Nicholls who was Mullins’ closest pursuer.
In the end, though, Mullins’ ten runners in the bet365 Gold Cup to Skelton’s single representative proved academic as Mullins had already sewn up the title with Il Etait Temps winning the Celebration Chase. Mullins thus matched Vincent O’Brien’s feat of back-to-back British championships from his Irish base in the 1950s.
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Lambourn wins Derby
No, it wasn’t Ed Walker, Charlie Hills, Richard Hughes, or any other trainer based in the Berkshire training centre who was celebrating after winning the Derby but, as so often, Aidan O’Brien.
Delacroix started favourite for Ballydoyle and proved himself the superior colt later in the year, but on the day it was Chester Vase winner Lambourn who saw it out best from the front to extend his trainer’s record number of Derby wins to eleven.
Both his grandsire Galileo and sire Australia had figured among O’Brien’s earlier winners. Like that pair, Lambourn followed up in the Irish Derby but he won’t go down as one of his trainer’s better Derby winners, and was subsequently beaten in the Great Voltigeur Stakes and St Leger.
At Doncaster he was the first Derby winner to contest the final classic since the same stable’s Camelot failed in his Triple Crown bid in 2012. With stablemate Scandinavia winning the latest St Leger instead, there was speculation that O’Brien would break his own record of 28 Group 1 races in a calendar year but he wound up two short.
A year of shocks
Until this year, there had only been two 100/1 winners of a Group 1 Flat race in Britain since that label was introduced more than fifty years ago. But in 2025 alone, three Group 1 winners were sent off at three-figure odds, with lightning striking twice on Champions Day at Ascot in October. The ground couldn’t be blamed for the shocks, either, with the going unusually firm for the time of year.
First to upset the apple cart was Powerful Glory, who had beaten one rival in his two previous starts in 2025, winning the Champions Sprint Stakes for Richard Fahey at 200/1. After that, Cicero’s Gift’s 100/1 win in another big field for the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes made less impact but was still a huge surprise. Those wins had followed supposed pacemaker Qirat holding on for a neck win at 150/1 in the Sussex Stakes.
There were similar results at a lower level too, with Blowers setting a record as the longest-priced winner in Britain when successful in a maiden hurdle at Exeter just before Christmas at odds of 300/1.
Scottish Champion Hurdle also-ran wins at Breeders’ Cup
On a similar theme, what about Ethical Diamond? Strictly speaking, odds of 28/1 doesn’t put him in the same league as the winners mentioned above, but for an ex-hurdler to beat a field of Group 1 winners in the Breeders’ Cup Turf on his first start outside handicaps was nothing short of remarkable.
Ethical Diamond began the year winning a maiden hurdle at Punchestown before running fourth in the County Hurdle but was only seventh in the Scottish Champion Hurdle when part of Willie Mullins’ push to retain his British title. But back on the Flat where he was also lightly raced, Ethical Diamond soon showed much improved form to win the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes and then the Ebor.
It was then that Mullins’ assistant David Casey hatched the plan which resulted in Ethical Diamond becoming his stable’s first runner at the Breeders’ Cup and beating dual Turf winner Rebel’s Romance in record time under Irish champion Dylan Browne McMonagle. Expect to see Ethical Diamond at the Dubai Carnival rather than the Cheltenham Festival next March.
Constitution Hill’s fall(s) from grace
They are supposed to get better with experience over obstacles, not worse, but it’s hard to think of another jumper whose career has unravelled quite as spectacularly as Constitution Hill. The 2023 Champion Hurdle winner, who’d looked such a natural over hurdles right from his novice days, began the year unbeaten in nine starts, having returned from exactly twelve months off to win a second successive Christmas Hurdle on Boxing Day 2024.
He soon took that record to ten with victory in the International Hurdle at Cheltenham when his mistake at the last was passed off as a rare lapse of judgement. In fact, it was a warning sign of something more sinister. Successive falls in the Champion Hurdle and Aintree Hurdle preceded a tame completion at Punchestown, but despite some intensive schooling beforehand, Constitution Hill only got as far as the second when falling yet again on his reappearance in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle in November. His next appearance in 2026 is likely to be on the Flat.
Rising to the top in Hong Kong
While Europe’s sprinters struggled to find a clear leader in 2025, there was no such uncertainty in Hong Kong. Ka Ying Rising completed a perfect year of eight more wins to extend his current winning run to 16 races. One more win, which could be just weeks away, will see him equal the record sequence in Hong Kong established by Silent Witness, winner of the Hong Kong Sprint in 2003 and 2004. Ka Ying Rising is a dual winner of the same race now too, coasting home by almost four lengths for his most recent win in December after making all the running.
In five of his eight wins in 2025, Ka Ying Rising has run to a bare minimum Timeform rating of 130, peaking at 135 which makes him the highest rated horse of the year over any distance anywhere in the world. He hasn’t just been making mincemeat of lesser rivals at level weights, either, as he also won a handicap conceding lumps of weight. Ka Ying Rising has been tested outside his backyard too, making short work of Australian rivals in the Everest which he’s due to target again in 2026.
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