Boughey reflects on another century – and looks forward to Bow Echo

Fresh from bringing up his fourth successive century with his final runner of 2025, George Boughey is excited to see the unbeaten Bow Echo lead his powerful string into battle this year.

While last season lacked a top-level success on home soil for the one of Newmarket’s brightest young trainers, he did saddle Believing to win the Al Quoz Sprint in Dubai and in Bow Echo has a genuine 2000 Guineas contender on his hands for this term.

After making a deep impression on his racecourse debut at Newbury in August, the Night Of Thunder colt went on to land Haydock’s Ascendant Stakes and the Royal Lodge at Newmarket to round off an unbeaten juvenile campaign, and Boughey is now targeting what would be a poignant Classic success over the Rowley Mile this spring follow the recent death of owner Sheikh Mohammed Obaid.

Boughey said: “He (Bow Echo) is the outstanding horse we’ve trained so far as a two-year-old and I hope everything carries on as normal.

“It was desperately sad news we got a few days ago about Sheikh Mohammed Obaid, who’d been a brilliant owner for us to have but also someone I learnt a huge amount off.

“We were only able to train a couple of crops of his homebred yearlings, but they were a high-level quality of horse and speaking to him every few days I understood they took a bit more training than the normal horse and his education of that was invaluable. He’ll be sorely missed by lots of people.

“I really hope Bow Echo can go and win a really big one for him next season. Life has a funny way of doing things – sometimes in these situations those kind of things happen, so please God it can.”

Boughey achieved a career-best tally of 136 winners in Britain in 2022 and followed that with 103 in 2023 and 105 in 2024.

He made it to three figures by the skin of his teeth in 2025, with his very last runner of the year, Invited, scoring at Lingfield on New Year’s Eve, a victory which also saw the trainer’s number one rider Billy Loughnane reach a 21st century record of 222 winners in a calendar year.

On reaching his century, Boughey added: “We had a couple of moments through the year where it looked almost impossible, but I gave it a bit of push late on to try to do it and I think it’s the fourth year on the spin we’ve managed it.

“Huge credit to everyone – the owners, the travelling staff, my office and obviously the horses. It’s something we wanted to do and I’m glad we were able to do it with the last runner.”