Ray Dawson and Ruth Carr’s Reigning Profit denied the 10-year-old Mark’s Choice a storybook win in the 5f handicap that now carries his name, and the way it happened said plenty about how Ripon rewards early speed.
Monday evening at Yorkshire’s Garden Racecourse served up a plot the crowd did not quite want. In the Mark’s Choice, Ripon’s Most-Winning Horse Handicap, the horse himself, a 10-year-old ridden by apprentice William Pyle for trainer Gemma Tutty, disputed the lead through much of the five-furlong contest before being run down close home. Reigning Profit, the 100/30 shot, got first run inside the final furlong and held on by three-quarters of a length from Rock Of England. Mark’s Choice stayed on for third, a length and a quarter behind the winner. On paper it reads as a routine near miss. At the track it felt heavier than that, because the race existed for one reason: to honour the gelding who just got beaten in it.
A Race Built Around One Horse
Ripon does sentiment better than most tracks, and this fixture proved the point again. Mark’s Choice is the winning-most horse in the course’s modern history. He is a 10-time winner at Ripon from 29 starts at the track, a tally that carried him past Ruth Carr’s old sprinter Pipers Note, an eight-time Ripon winner who was retired at the age of ten. The racecourse named a handicap after him while he was still in training, a rare tribute to a horse who then keeps turning up to run in it. Owned by Cragg Wood Racing and now stabled with Tutty on the North Yorkshire Moors, he carries a 17% career win rate and a 34% place rate across a life that has passed through several yards. “He knows every ridge and camber on this track, and at his age that edge counts for plenty over five furlongs,” one Ripon-based form analyst noted. That knowledge showed as he broke smartly and took the field along off a mark of 69.
How The Sprint Was Won
The tactical shape was familiar to anyone who studies the place. Ripon’s sharp, right-handed course and five-furlong run-in reward horses that break quickly and hold a prominent pitch, while hold-up runners rarely arrive in time. Reigning Profit did precisely that from stall two. “Reigning Profit was drawn two but he was so fast away we actually ended up getting a lovely position three off the rail,” said winning jockey Ray Dawson, speaking to Sky Sports Racing. “He obviously loves the track, he handles the undulations very well and he stays six well so I was confident to get him going early enough.” The win made Carr’s seven-year-old three from three at the course, a record laid out in the full 6 July result, and it explained why local knowledge shortens prices here.
Speaking to Gambling.com, a leading authority on over 100 UK online casinos and bookmakers, one racing analyst said, “Reigning Profit’s unbeaten Ripon record made him the obvious call the moment he broke on terms. That reading looked sound as Goyard, sent off a warm order in the Racing Post forecast at 2/1 ahead of 9/2 Rock Of England and 11/2 Reigning Profit, never landed a blow from the rear under Daniel Tudhope and trailed home eighth of nine”.
A Veteran With Plenty Left
For Mark’s Choice, the effort was no disgrace and arguably a nudge forward on recent form. He had slid down the weights after three below-par efforts, yet on Monday he travelled strongly and dug in to the line, which suggests the old horse retains appetite as well as ability. “He was giving weight and years away and still finished within a length and a quarter of a fit rival rated 77,” a Yorkshire-based tipster observed. “Off 69 at Ripon, he remains dangerous every time.” Tutty holds options through a Ripon campaign that stretches to the Season Finale and Theakston Beer Festival in late September, and a mark in the high 60s keeps her stalwart competitive in this grade.
What It Means For The Summer Ahead
For the winner, a modest rise is unlikely to blunt his claims in similar heats, and Carr has long treated Ripon as a happy hunting ground. The wider view points towards August, when the course stages its showpiece. The William Hill Great St Wilfrid on Saturday 15 August tops a raceday that carried £215,000 in prize money in 2025, with a £100,000 pot for the six-furlong feature won that year by Mick Appleby’s Intervention, a 16/1 chance for The Horse Watchers syndicate, under the same William Pyle who partnered Mark’s Choice on Monday. Before that comes the Go Racing in Yorkshire Summer Festival on Saturday 18 July, sponsored by Sky Bet, with gates open at 11:30am and the first of seven races at 2:05pm.
There was no fairytale this time. There was, though, a fresh reminder that Ripon’s tightest sprints reward pace and position, and few horses have ever understood that better than the one whose name now sits above the race.
