News
Thursday July 16 2026
Havaila's road from Plumpton to a bet365 Gold Cup short head keeps the nursery tag alive
Three weeks after landing the Sussex National on his home Plumpton track, Havaila went and won one of jump racing's oldest handicaps too, and Caoilin Quinn's season just kept getting better along with him.
Plumpton likes to call itself a nursery for top-flight talent. Most years that's more hope than headline. Havaila won the BetGoodwin Sussex National at Plumpton on 6 April by five lengths from Stan's The Man, sent off 7/2 favourite off a rating of 125. Three weeks later he turned up at Sandown for the bet365 Gold Cup, a race that's carried names like Arkle and Desert Orchid on its roll of honour since 1957, and won that one too. He got up to beat Our Power by a short head, with Road To Home a length back in third.
A finish worth the wait
Caoilin Quinn had Havaila settled towards the rear early, travelling on the bridle. He came under pressure at the railway fences on the final circuit, went past the leaders inside the last two, and still had Our Power and Road To Home closing on him right to the line. Three horses went for the same gap at the same moment.
“Caoilin gave him a great ride because he's not easy,” trainer Gary Moore said afterwards. “He switched him off and travelled, travelled, travelled all the way round, and managed to just get there in the end.” The winning distance was a short head. It could have gone any of three ways.
Why the Plumpton form mattered
Sandown's official card had Havaila second favourite off two wins on the spin, and the form that mattered most in the market analysis was the one he'd already put up at Plumpton.
“The Sussex National is built on exactly the kind of test that suits a horse stepping up in grade,” said an analyst at Gambling.com, a platform that reviews betting sites and online casino sites in the UK. “Three and a half miles, twenty fences, it's a stamina trial that tells you more than a shorter race ever could.” That reading held up. Havaila arrived at Sandown fitter and sharper than most of the field, and the extra distance at the bet365 Gold Cup played straight to the strength Plumpton had already shown he had.
The Moores and a career-best season
This was the biggest win of the season for Gary Moore's Cisswood Stables, and it landed at a track he's said he loves more than any other in Britain. His son Josh joined him on the licence in May 2024, after a fall at Haydock in 2022 ended his own riding career, a leg break and a punctured lung that kept him in hospital for twelve weeks.
The Moores go back further than that. Gary's father Charlie rode around Fontwell, Plumpton and the old Folkestone course before his death in 2000, without ever hitting the big time himself.
Quinn closed out the season with 41 winners, a career best, most of them for the Moores. “All credit to the horse, he's turned inside out,” Quinn said after Sandown. “He loves this quick ground and he's not stopping yet I'd say. It's the Moores' favourite track and the way we train it probably suits our horses round here.”
Nine winners together at Sandown for Quinn and the yard is matched only by eight apiece at Plumpton and Fontwell. That tells you where their form really lives.
What it means for next season
Havaila now holds an entry for next month's Chester Cup, quoted at 66/1, and there's already loose talk of a tilt at the Randox Grand National further down the line.
None of that happens without Plumpton, whose Sussex National sits low down most pundits' lists of qualifying trials but keeps producing horses who go on to bigger things. It's one of three principal fixtures the course runs across the season, alongside the Sussex Champion Hurdle and Sussex Champion Chase, and it's exactly the kind of proving ground that gives the smaller tracks their reason for being.
Plumpton's own season is done now until the Ladies Day Season Opener in September. Havaila's spring has given them a story worth telling until then.
