Hold my beer while I chase £250,000 - the small syndicate enjoying its biggest ever week

It's already been a big week in the life of the Hold My Beer Syndicate and it might get a whole lot bigger. The four-person group founded four years ago by Tom Hughes was elated to win the feature race at Perth on Saturday night and on Thursday they have a live chance in the most valuable race on York's card.

That's not the Pertemps Network Yorkshire Oaks, but rather the extraordinarily well-funded sales race, the Harry's Half Million By Goffs Premier Yearling Stakes, the conditions of which insist each runner must have fetched less than £600,000 as a yearling. Sensorium had no problem with that, having been sold three times for less than £50,000 but the grey has already provided his owners with a return, having made all to win a Beverley maiden last month. 

He now gets a shot at £249,908.16 and even if he can't quite win, there is prize-money down to tenth. The runner-up will get almost twice as much as the third in the Yorkshire Oaks.

Flat racing is a newish departure for the Hold My Beer crew. Hughes and his friends bonded over a shared love of the winter game. "We'd meet at Cheltenham every March and we just said, when we'd had a few pints and we'd won a few quid, 'Let's buy a horse'."

It's all about the fun – "Hold my beer" is what they habitually say to each other when filling out their Placepot entries – but their usual bonhomie looked like being tested on Saturday when their best horse Mahons Glory ran poorly and returned with a leg wound.

Nothing could be expected from Here Comes Georgie, who was later sent off at 33-1 in the feature race – and yet somehow prevailed by a neck. "He got a great ride from Henry Brooke," Hughes says. "It was amazing."

Can Sensorium finish the story in style? The bookies go 20-1, so his chance must be more obvious than Here Comes Georgie's.

"He won last time out and he's going really well," Hughes says. "It's great for a small yard. That's what my thing is. I had a horse with a big yard years ago and I saw the way it works. 

"If you're a bigger fish in a small pond, you get more information from trainers. Dylan Cunha must have rung me ten times since yesterday about how the horse is going, what the pace of the race might be, how things are going to work out."

Read more:

Confirmed runners and riders for the Nunthorpe at York on Friday 

Confirmed runners and riders for the Yorkshire Oaks on day two of York's Ebor meeting 

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