| LEADER | Orchestra's principal first violin; a dog or horse at the front of a team; the head of an expedition; or, the first climber on a rope (6) |
| LEADDOG | Husky at the front of a team |
| BAY | Sound like a dog - or horse |
| HUSKY | A dog or horse, you might say (5) |
| CLASSIC | Filly takes place of horse at the front in fashionable race |
| LEADINGQUESTION | Who shall be principal first violin? Me? |
| NICHE | Horse at the front in good position (5) |
| CLAUDIO | Dacorum Orchestra principal conductor Di Meo (7) |
| BOUT | A curve in the side of a guitar or violin; a boxing/wrestling match; or, a period, stint or turn of something, such as drinking or ill health (4) |
| HALO | Circle of light around the sun or moon; or, such an aureola around the head of an angel/saint in a painting (4) |
| RAE | John, 19th Century Scottish author of Narrative of an Expedition to the Shores of the Arctic Sea, in 1846 and 1847 (3) |
| THOTH | Egyptian god of the moon and of wisdom and learning, usually depicted as a man with the head of an ibis (5) |
| KICKEDSTARTER | Gave a member of the A-team the boot? |
| OATHS | Curses horses at the front getting stuck into horse-feed (5) |
| OATES | Captain Lawrence ---, Antarctic explorer who died in 1912 on the return leg of an expedition to the South Pole (5) |
| CLYPEUS | Shield-like plate on the head of an arthropod insect between the labrum and the frons (7) |
| SOGGY | So a horse, at the end of the day, may be pretty muddy (5) |
| EPSOM | Town in Surrey, site of the racecourse where suffragette Emily Davison collided with George V's horse at the Derby in 1913 (5) |
| ONETRACKMIND | Obsession of jockey perhaps aboard last horse at The Curragh? Keep an eye on him! (3-5,4) |
| AGHOSTOFACHANCE | Slim odds of a new stagecoach wandering without horse at the lead (1,5,2,1,6) |
