Chapel Lane

The recent form makes for interesting reading. Three of the last six runs have produced a placed finish, which is encouraging, though a couple of blank efforts — including a sixth — suggest Chapel Lane can be inconsistent. The horse raced just one day ago, so this is very much a live, active campaign rather than a horse being assessed on what it did months ago.

The trainer, W McCreery, operates out of Rathbride in County Kildare, and the yard has sent out 19 winners already this season — a healthy total that suggests horses leaving that stable are generally well-prepared and competitive. Being trained by someone who clearly knows how to get winners out of a yard is a decent starting point, and it may simply be a matter of time before Chapel Lane finds the right opportunity to go one better than a placed finish. Four near-misses in six races is actually more encouraging than it might look on paper — this is not a horse that is getting beaten far out of contention. It keeps finding its way into the picture. The question is when, not if, that translates into a first win.