Heavenly Heather and other stranger things from the world of racing in 2025

Last weekend’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle was by any standards a dramatic race which produced a shock result after both market leaders had crashed out of the contest. But in a year of bizarre outcomes, often in top races, it was by no means alone in producing a head-scratching result. There was even something uncannily familiar about the way the race unfolded given the Champion Hurdle had played out in much the same way involving some of the same horses eight months earlier.

At Newcastle, there was the early departure of favourite Constitution Hill, the fall later in the race of his chief rival – The New Lion playing the role that State Man had taken at Cheltenham – and once again it was Golden Ace who was there to pick up the pieces (replay below). Golden Ace, incidentally, had been beaten at 4/11 in a match at Wetherby on her previous start by The New Lion’s sister Kateira, though as we’ll come to later, she was by no means the shortest priced favourite to get turned over during the year.

Golden Ace was sent off at 22/1 at Newcastle and 25/1 for the Champion Hurdle but she wasn’t the longest priced winner at the Festival. That was Poniros, one of Willie Mullins’ 11 runners in the Triumph Hurdle, who was successful on his hurdling debut at 100/1 and one of seven from his yard starting at between 50/1 and 200/1. It had been 35 years since the last 100/1 shock at the Festival, that coming from Norton’s Coin’s victory over Desert Orchid and co in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The Triumph result had repercussions, however, with Cheltenham announcing a rule change in September that effectively prevents horses making their hurdling debuts in the Triumph or any of the Festival’s Grade 1 novice hurdles from now on.

But you don’t need eight flights of hurdles to produce shock results as the rest of the year was soon to show. On Good Friday, the Tracy Waggott-trained four-year-old Heavenly Heather enjoyed her five minutes of fame in front of the ITV cameras – she even featured on the national news that evening - when winning the Fillies’ And Mares’ Championships Handicap on All-Weather Finals day at Newcastle at 200/1.

The maiden had been sent off at odds ranging from 28/1 to 150/1 in her five previous starts. The most remarkable aspect of her win was that, in a race where most of the field were running from out of the handicap, Heavenly Heather was the one furthest out of the weights, being 19 lb ‘wrong’.

While Heavenly Heather hasn’t won since, she has run several other good races at Newcastle, proving herself a fairly useful filly in keeping her with good pedigree. She was bred by Godolphin, being by Shamardal out of a useful half-sister to their Melbourne Cup winner Cross Counter. Heavenly Heather’s win came just weeks after Devilwala became the first 100/1 winner of the year on the Flat when successful in a classified stakes at Wolverhampton.

The July Cup provided a foretaste of still bigger shocks to come at Group 1 level when No Half Measures provided Richard Hughes with his first top-flight success as a trainer at 66/1 (replay below). Runner-up in a listed race on her previous start, No Half Measures was apparently the longest priced winner of a race that dates back to 1876. Lacking a clear leader or much strength in depth, the sprint division was very much ripe for an upset or two, and the July Cup certainly wouldn’t be the last of the season.

Meanwhile, the Flat season was about to take an even more unpredictable turn in the Sussex Stakes. Juddmonte’s Field of Gold was sent off the 1/3 favourite to complete a Group 1 hat-trick, having most recently put up a top-class effort in the St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot. To help him in his task and ensure a well-run race, his owners provided him with a pacemaker, Qirat, last seen finishing in rear in the Hunt Cup at the same meeting.

One of two ‘hares’ in the field who were ten lengths clear of everything else by halfway, Qirat went on as the other one dropped away and managed to hold his advantage all the way to the line, becoming one of those rare pacemakers – like Maroof and Summoner in past editions of the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes – who successfully slips his field. At 150/1, Qirat thus became the longest-priced winner of a Group 1 on the Flat in Britain and, no less importantly for us at least, doubtless achieved the same claim to fame for Timeform’s Horses To Follow publication!

The only two 100/1 winners in the top flight on the Flat in Britain in more than 50 years of pattern races had been Hittite Glory in the 1975 Flying Childers (a Group 1 back then) and Sole Power in the first of his two Nunthorpe victories in 2010 when the other 100/1 shot in the field, Piccadilly Filly, finished third. Ain’t Nobody went close to being another in the latest Nunthorpe, finishing runner-up.

Remarkably, though, the number of Group 1 winners at 100/1 or longer in 2025 alone exceeded the total for the preceding fifty-plus years after two more went in on the same afternoon on an extraordinary Champions Day card at Ascot. Field of Gold was a beaten favourite again in a Queen Elizabeth II Stakes won by one of the two 100/1-shots in the race, Cicero’s Gift, who hadn’t won above listed company previously and had done all his other winning under softer conditions.

But earlier on the card, Powerful Glory had pulled off a still bigger shock at 200/1 in the Champions Sprint Stakes (No Half Measures fourth this time). Having just his fifth career start, Powerful Glory had finished last of five in a minor event at Beverley on his previous outing, though had won both his races at two in the manner of a smart colt, notably the Mill Reef Stakes.

With two-year-old Night Patrol winning a novice at Newbury at 125/1 earlier in the autumn and two more shock winners going in over hurdles before October was out – Just An Artist at Perth (125/1) and Fight My Fire at Fontwell (100/1) – that brought the number of winners for the year in Britain at 100/1 or more to nine.

Among the year’s other more unlikely results – even if his American pari-mutuel odds of just under 28/1 didn’t quite reflect the enormity of his achievement – was Ethical Diamond’s win in the Breeders’ Cup Turf in which he was chased home by Rebel’s Romance, twice a former winner, breaking the Del Mar track record in the process. The victory of Willie Mullins’ first ever runner at the meeting seemed to have the local TV pundits reeling from the fact that he had not only been running over jumps but also that his two wins on the Flat this year ‘hadn’t even been stakes races’. That’s to undervalue what a good race the Ebor is these days, but they had a point - finishing seventh in the Scottish Champion Hurdle is not what you’d expect to see in the recent form of a Breeders’ Cup winner.

So much for the long-shots. The year had its fair share of short-priced favourites turned over too. Chief among those was the Fergal O’Brien-trained Magical Annie who would doubtless have landed odds of 1/16 against her three rivals in a mares’ novices’ hurdle at Catterick in March had she not fallen at the last. Remarkably, stablemate That’ll Do Moss was beaten at 1/10 in a similar event at Ayr just two days later. And hopefully punters took note of the date before getting too involved with Loud And Proud who was beaten at 1/9 in a two-runner mares’ handicap chase at Fakenham on April Fools Day.

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