Baileys Khelstar

Those near-misses are not nothing, though. Recent form reads 2-4-2-11-7-2, meaning four of the last six finishes have been a second or fourth place. The horse is clearly still competitive and still trying — it just hasn't been able to get its nose in front. The one blip, that eleventh-place finish buried in the middle of that sequence, looks like the exception rather than the rule.

One curious wrinkle is the Class 5 record. These are the bread-and-butter races, the most common level for a horse like this, yet Baileys Khelstar has run five times at that level without winning once. The victories have come elsewhere, including that Ascot win, which is not a track where horses tend to stumble into glory. Winning at Ascot means something; it suggests there is genuine quality here, even if finding the winning thread again has proved frustrating.

The partnership with jockey Joe Fanning is worth noting. In seven rides together, Fanning has guided the horse to 2 wins — a win rate of 29%, or roughly 1 in every 3 and a half races. That is a notably better return than the overall career average, and it hints that when horse and jockey click, the combination works. Fanning knows this horse.

Behind the scenes, Baileys Khelstar is trained by Charlie Johnston at Middleham Moor in North Yorkshire. Johnston's yard has sent out 128 winners already this season, making it one of the most productive operations in the country. A horse trained there is not short of expertise or attention. With the horse having raced just one day ago and clearly still in active work, another chance to end that two-year winning drought cannot be far away.