Big Dispute

The recent run of form makes for uncomfortable reading. Finishing 10th, 9th, 4th, 3rd, 6th, and 3rd across the last six races, Big Dispute has been edging into the frame occasionally but drifting toward the back in others. Those two third-place finishes hint that there is still some ability there — a horse finishing third is usually only a length or two off the winner — but the pair of near-last finishes suggest inconsistency is the real enemy here.

Regular partner Phillip Enright has yet to find the winning formula aboard Big Dispute, going 0 from 5 together. That is not necessarily a damning statistic — plenty of good horses and jockeys take time to click — but it adds to the sense that this combination is still searching for its best day. The horse is trained by Kevin Thomas Coleman out of Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary, a yard that has sent out 8 winners already this season, so the operation clearly knows how to get horses winning. The question is simply whether Big Dispute can find its way back to the kind of form it showed at Killarney.

Having raced just one day ago, Big Dispute is very much an active campaigner, and Coleman is clearly not giving up on finding another good day for this horse. Sometimes a horse just needs the right conditions, the right race, and the right moment to remind everyone what it is capable of. For Big Dispute, that moment has been a long time coming.