American State

The interesting part of American State's record is what it shows about the level at which it races. When competing in Class 5 races (the lower tier of competitive racing), it has won two of eight races, which is a 25 percent win rate. That is genuinely solid form at that level. But the bigger picture is less encouraging. It has not won a race in six months, with its last victory coming at Southwell on April 5 this year. Since then, across its last six outings, it has finished fourth, fourth, fourth, second, fourth, and sixth. That is a horse that keeps getting into the mix—those fourth-place finishes suggest it is running well enough to be competitive—but cannot quite find the winning line.

Jockey Kieran Shoemark has ridden it five times and won once with it, a better win rate than the horse manages overall, though the sample is small. What American State needs now is for the recent run of near-misses to turn into a winner. The fourth-place finishes are frustrating rather than alarming, but a horse this age, in a career that has now stretched to twenty-one races, will need to rediscover the form that brought that first win at Newbury in June last year. Whether it does depends on whether it can tighten up the finishing speed that those Class 5 victories suggest is still in there somewhere.