Cordouan

That Laytown win in September 2022 is a nice detail — Laytown is Ireland's only beach racecourse, a one-day-a-year event run on the sand at low tide, and landing a winner there is the kind of thing the yard remember. The second win came at Gowran Park in August 2024, which is now almost two full years ago, and the recent form figures of 11-9-25-8-8-16 suggest Cordouan is finding it hard to recapture that level. Finishing 25th tells you there are days when things simply do not go to plan.

Where the horse does look genuinely interesting is over seven furlongs to a mile. At that trip, Cordouan has won 2 of 9 races — a win rate of 22%, or roughly 1 in every 4 and a half attempts. That is a meaningful difference from the overall record and suggests that when the conditions are right and the distance suits, this is a horse that can compete. Trainer P Sweeney operates out of Letterkenny in Co Donegal, a relatively small yard that has still managed to send out 6 winners this season, which shows there is ability in the operation even if Cordouan has not been among the scorers lately.

Regular jockey Cian MacRedmond has ridden the horse 7 times and has that one win together — a win rate of 14%, or 1 from 7. That is actually above Cordouan's overall average, which hints that the partnership is at least a functional one. At eight years old and without a win in the last 23 months, the question is whether another day like Gowran Park 2024 is still in there. The fact that Cordouan was out racing just yesterday suggests the team still believes it might be.