Blue Bear

What makes the situation a little puzzling is that Blue Bear is trained by the joint yard of Joel Parkinson and Sue Smith, based in High Eldwick, West Yorkshire — a team that has sent out 44 winners already this season, so it is not as though the training operation lacks for knowhow. The horse has also had a regular partner in jockey Tom Midgley, who has ridden it five times without a win. That kind of continuity usually helps, but so far the combination has not clicked.

Blue Bear tends to compete at Class 5, which is the entry level of British racing — the races where horses who have not been winning elsewhere come to find their level. And yet even here, across 10 races at that grade, the win column stays empty. Recent form offers a faint flicker of encouragement: finishes of fourth, fourth, seventh, fifth, and seventh in the last five completed races suggests the horse is not trailing in last, but it is also not threatening the front. Placed twice in five recent runs is something, at least.

Still active and last seen on a racecourse just 19 days ago, Blue Bear is clearly still being pointed at races in the hope that something clicks. At 8, time is not exactly on its side, but horses have broken duck runs at this age before. The yard clearly believes there is a race to be won somewhere.