Serengeti springs 50-1 upset at Windsor for Mike Murphy

Serengeti’s blue-blooded background finally met a useful handicap at Windsor, and the result was a 50-1 jolt. The former Aidan O’Brien runner, once an €800,000 yearling, dug out a head win over Merveilleux Lapin in the 1m2f handicap on 25 May 2026, with Rob Hornby getting him to the line in front after a run of costly disappointments.

The four-year-old had arrived at Windsor with little recent evidence that his old promise still lived there. He had been beaten by 20 rivals in Newbury’s Spring Cup and then finished last of 28 in Ascot’s Victoria Cup on his first two starts for Mike Murphy. This time, the move up in trip and the first-time tongue-tie changed the picture. Serengeti travelled with more purpose, found enough under pressure, and held on in the final strides to reward the gamble on a horse whose form had been sliding.

Murphy said the stable had long believed the horse retained ability, even after the Ascot run left them frustrated. “We’ve always known there was a race in him but last time at Ascot he didn’t perform and we were disappointed. Today he did perform. There’s no rhyme or reason, but you’ve got to keep chopping and changing things,” he said. Hornby, who had ridden Serengeti before, was just as direct about the horse’s ceiling when everything clicks: “I’ve ridden him before, he’s got pieces of form and he’s quite a good horse when he’s on song.”

Serengeti’s route to Windsor has been anything but straightforward. He began his career with Aidan O’Brien and won once for him, in a handicap at Naas, before moving on for short spells with Dylan Cunha and James Ferguson. He was a Wootton Bassett colt out of Holy Roman Empress, by American Pharoah, and his auction profile once matched that pedigree: first an €800,000 yearling, then sold by Coolmore for 32,000gns in October.

Racing records list Serengeti as a four-year-old colt foaled on 7 January 2022, owned by Jim Gill, with a career record now standing at 16 runs and 3 wins. The Windsor result did more than salvage a handicap mark; it reminded the market that even a horse with a glittering start and a steep fall can still find one more race.