Balance Of Trade

Twelve races into its career and still searching for a first win, Balance Of Trade has at least shown enough to suggest it belongs on a racecourse. That single place from twelve outings tells you the horse is competitive without quite being able to finish the job. Looking at the last six runs — a mix of mid-field finishes and one creditable third — there is a consistent pattern of being in the race without ever quite threatening to win it. The third-place finish stands out as the closest it has come, and on a good day that suggests the talent is somewhere in there. The question is whether it can ever string everything together at the right moment.

Wesley Joyce has stuck with the horse through nine of those twelve races without a win to show for it, which says something about patience on both sides. That kind of loyalty between rider and horse is not nothing — Joyce presumably knows this horse better than anyone at this point, and if a breakthrough is coming, he may well be the one in the saddle when it arrives.

Mulvany's yard at Kells in County Meath has sent out 20 winners this season, so this is not a struggling operation. The trainer clearly knows how to get horses winning. Balance Of Trade is simply the one that has not clicked yet — and in a yard that is firing on most cylinders, that makes it the interesting puzzle rather than the write-off. Raced just yesterday, this horse is very much an active project, not a forgotten one.

Zero wins from twelve races sounds bleak, but racing is full of horses that took their time before finding the right race and the right day. Balance Of Trade has had plenty of chances and has not embarrassed itself. Whether race thirteen brings the breakthrough that eleven others have not is the question worth watching.