Carthusian

That said, the recent form makes for difficult reading. The last six runs show a pair of seventh-place finishes bookending four races where Carthusian failed to feature in the placings at all, and there's no win to speak of anywhere in the record. At some point, a horse needs to convert that effort into a victory, and so far it hasn't happened.

The one genuinely encouraging detail is who is doing the training. Mrs John Harrington operates out of Moone in County Kildare, and her yard has sent out 53 winners already this season — a serious number that marks her out as one of the more productive operations around. Trainers of that calibre don't tend to keep running a horse without believing there's something worth finding, and the fact that Carthusian continues to race is at least a sign that the team hasn't given up on it. Whether the horse can reward that patience is the question that still needs answering.