Cosmic Spirit

What makes this puzzling is that Case's yard is clearly in decent health right now — 15 winners sent out this season suggests a team that knows what it's doing. The problem is that Cosmic Spirit simply hasn't found its level yet. It has run four times at Class 4, which sits in the middle tier of British racing — not the glamour end, not the very bottom — and has drawn a blank in all four. A horse that can't make an impression at that level is a horse searching for answers.

The one thing worth noting is that Cosmic Spirit ran just yesterday, so this is very much a story still being written. Horses can take time to click, and trainers sometimes need several runs to find the right conditions for a horse to show what it can do. But right now, with no wins and no places from eight attempts, patience is being tested. The next few races will matter a great deal in deciding whether there is a performance hiding in there somewhere, or whether the yard need to fundamentally rethink their approach.