destinado

The seven-year-old Lope De Vega gelding Destinado has been a revelation for Deva Racing since joining Newmarket trainer James Owen, winning eight times in 2024.

A beautifully-related Juddmonte homebred, he is a half-brother to the Gr.3 Prix Penelope winner Agave and out of a winning half-sister to the great Enable. Originally trained by Francis-Henri Graffard in France, he was second twice from five outings before moving to Britain. 

Although largely disappointing initially in Britain - save for a 1m4f win at Wolverhampton in February 2023 – the upshot was that Destinado was a well-handicapped horse when joining Deva Racing.

He made a winning debut for James Owen in a 1m1½f 0-55 Wolverhampton handicap in early January last year, then hacked up in a 1m4f Classified contest at Southwell just under a fortnight later. A 1m2f victory at Lingfield followed shortly afterwards, a success that was supplemented by a 1m3f handicap victory at Southwell in late February. 

By now Destinado had risen from a mark of 45 to the low 60s, but his improvement was just beginning. Lining up at the Lincoln meeting at Doncaster towards the end of March, he gave James Owen a winner with his first-ever Flat runner on turf, storming to a three-and-a-quarter length win in a well-contested 0-70 handicap. He was back in the winner’s circle again at Musselburgh in April, showing tremendous courage to land a 1m4½f handicap by a neck, the win coming from a rating nearly two stone higher than that with which he started the year! 

The Musselburgh win propelled Destinado to a mark in the 70s, and it took a little while for him to regain the winning thread. However, he was back in business in a 1m4f Southwell handicap in November and then struck over 1m5f at Lingfield two starts later.

By the end of the season, Destinado had won 8 of his 27 starts, at distances ranging from 1m1½f to 1m5f, on various different surfaces, and for a prizemoney haul in excess of £50,000. These are extraordinary figures for a horse operating at his level, and he even figures on the All-Weather Championships leaderboard at the time of writing. 

A magnificent success story for his owners and a glowing advert for the shrewd way in which Deva Racing horses are sourced, it is exciting to contemplate what Destinado might be capable of in 2025.