Newmarket-based trainer Stuart Williams talks to Steve Dennis about the hugely improved four-year-old (now five) who won eight times last year
Start at the bottom and work your way up – fine advice for all those who would make their mark on the world.
Crowd Quake took that wise counsel and literally ran with it, becoming the winningmost horse in Britain and Ireland in 2025 with eight victories to his name, his a complete metamorphosis from absolute zero to handicap hero.
For at the beginning of the year, Crowd Quake was more a candidate for a racehorse retraining project than an actual racehorse. He appeared a hopeless case, cast out of the Godolphin empire for small change, beaten 67 lengths on his debut in the dying embers of his three-year-old season, his position on the racing ladder not on the lowest rung but somewhere below even that, rock bottom.
Look at him now. Eight wins, almost £120,000 in earnings, and an official rating that puts him within hailing distance of Pattern-class – Crowd Quake is now a success story, not a cautionary tale, one that started with the words ‘once upon a time, there was a horse who didn’t know how to run’.
“The first time we sent him up the canter, he didn’t know what to do,” says Stuart Williams, Newmarket trainer and the alchemist responsible for the transformation of this gelded four-year-old – now five, of course.
“He was a mid-season three-year-old when I bought him but he behaved like a yearling. He was with Andre Fabre, but he can’t have been that sound, can’t have done more than a very little cantering. He didn’t have a clue about anything.”
Ideal start in life
Crowd Quake had had the ideal start in life. Bred by Godolphin, a son of British and Irish champion sire Night Of Thunder, trained by perennial French champion Andre Fabre – but at some point this go-to recipe for success curdled and Williams picked him up at Tattersalls in July for just 11,000gns. And soon, even that modest outlay looked like a waste of money.
“I’d normally be able to find an owner at that sort of price, but when I told people that he was like a yearling rather than a three-year-old, so backward, and it would take four or five months to just get him going, funnily enough no-one wanted him,” says Williams.
“I gave up riding 15 years ago, but I made my comeback to ride him out for a week just to see how bad things were. He didn’t show any speed, he didn’t show any enthusiasm.
“Eventually, more than four months later, it was time to try him on a racecourse. I didn’t want to get him lapped, to embarrass ourselves, so I decided to put him in a bumper. I don’t have a jumps licence, so I gifted him to [fellow Newmarket trainer] Julia Feilden and she ran him at Huntingdon.”
Dictionary corner: a bumper is a two-mile race on the flat under jumps rules for young horses who will one day become hurdlers and steeplechasers, designed to give them valuable racecourse experience before tackling obstacles.
Crowd Quake finished ninth of 12 (none of the three behind him have ever won a race) and Williams retrieved him from Feilden, scratching his head. He then tried a completely different tack, giving Crowd Quake three runs in four weeks, all over five furlongs on the all-weather. Sixth, sixth, last of five.
Learning on the job
“He was learning on the job,” says Williams. “His first run was the best of the three, they went very quick and he got outpaced [formbook comment reads ‘cajoled along early’] but he stayed on late [formbook comment reads ‘eyecatcher’].
“Then I stepped him up to a mile and he didn’t click at all,” he goes on. “But that’s where the penny must have dropped, something somehow lit a spark in him. When he got home he seemed like he was up for it, finally, and I ran him again five days later.”
Crowd Quake was on his way, first rung of the ladder. In early May, off an official mark of 45 – for comparison, European Horse of the Year Calandagan is rated 125 – he won a very minor handicap at Windsor over a mile and a quarter, the longer distance and the dawning realisation that he was in fact a racehorse drawing out vestiges of talent hitherto wholly concealed.
Two weeks later he went back to Windsor and won again, setting in motion an almost uninterrupted ascent through the ranks of moderate horses and into the realms of real quality.
Further successes at York, Newmarket (twice within a week), Chepstow and Southwell (all-weather), gained between 1m and 1m4f on fast going and easy ground, were capped by victory at Doncaster in a valuable handicap on his final start of 2025.
Yet even as he produced the best performance of his life there were still echoes of the greenness, the naivety that he had so belatedly relinquished.
“He was walking around the parade ring at Doncaster with his head in the air, looking about himself, as though wondering ‘why am I here?’,” says Williams.
Very unusual
“That was the 18th race of his career. That attitude is very unusual for a horse, and it makes me think that hopefully there’s more to come.
“I ran him back quickly a few times in the summer [three races in 11 days on one occasion] because he wasn’t taking a lot out of himself, which is pretty rare for a busy horse. He didn’t do any work at all between those races, maybe one quiet hack out, and he was ready to go again.”
Those eight wins in 2025 came from 16 starts, with former champion apprentice Marco Ghiani his most frequent ally in the saddle with three wins, while Rossa Ryan and Ray Dawson each won twice on him and apprentice Olivia Gaines completed the set.
Another anomaly of Crowd Quake’s unorthodox career is the fact that his trainer is also his owner. Most trainers would greatly prefer to have someone else paying the bills, but Williams is not of that number, certainly in this case.
“He won two fifty-grand races and more than £100,000 in all,” he says, a song in his heart, a jingle in his pockets.
“That’s not bad, is it? Look, I’m happy to own him myself, he’s a lovely horse, but equally I’d be happy if someone came in for a half-share, a third-share, something like that.”
Higher profile
Williams tested the water for potential buyers by sending Crowd Quake the short distance back to the Tattersalls sales complex after his Doncaster win, but even though the gelding had a much higher profile than on his previous visit, no-one put their hand up for him.
“Loads of people were interested in him,” he says. “They all wanted him out of the box to have a good look, and he passed all the scans and tests.
“But when he went into the ring, no-one turned up to bid. I can only think that maybe he’s run too many times as buyers seem to prefer lightly raced horses. He didn’t reach his reserve so I brought him home again.”
Williams is seldom without a plan, though. “One thing we might look at doing this year is raceday leasing, where someone, or a group of people, pays to ‘own’ him for a race at a big meeting,” he muses. “He’d be the right sort of horse for that and it could be an interesting route to go down.”
Crowd Quake was naturally the biggest contributor to Williams’s tally of 70 wins during 2025, his second-best campaign for both winners and prize-money in more than 30 years with a licence.
He has had similarly prolific horses in the past, notably seven-time winner Quinault in 2023 – coincidentally another Godolphin cast-off – and recognises that his position in the training hierarchy makes such an individual worth more to a yard than simply the pounds and pence of the prize-money haul.
“We’re not a huge stable and we can’t compete at the top level with Newmarket’s big hitters, so having a horse like him to keep us in the headlines, ticking over all year, makes a big difference,” he says.
Spending power
“We don’t have the spending power, so to unearth one like him helps keep us going. In fact, if you ranked trainers on the basis of cost of stock against prize-money, I think we’d be near the top of the table.”
Crowd Quake begins 2026 on an official mark of 91, a world away from the lowly rating with which he began his winning spree, and is now at the sort of level where he could be tried in Listed grade, which would be quite something for a horse who not much more than a year ago needed a search party to locate him in a run-of-the-mill bumper. The shrewd Williams may resist that angle.
“Given the prize-money situation at the moment he can earn more in decent handicaps than he can in conditions races, and he’s a gelding with no stud value to consider, so for the time being at least he’ll stay in handicap company,” he says.
“A mile and a quarter is the right distance for him, with a little cut in the ground an asset. He has won over a mile and a half and stays it fine, but he isn’t quick enough for a mile at the level he’s at now.
“He’s had a nice break and will be back in action on the turf in the spring. He’s a horse for those good middle-distance Saturday handicaps and hopefully he can continue to do well.
“Eight more wins? We can dream …”
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