Crystal Aurora

What makes this slightly puzzling is where she races. Class 5 is the level where horses are expected to be competitive, the kind of races designed to give horses like Crystal Aurora a realistic chance of winning. She has run three times at that level and come up empty each time. Zero wins from three attempts at the easiest tier of racing is the sort of statistic that raises questions about whether she simply needs time, or whether winning is going to remain elusive.

Her trainer Ivan Furtado, based in Wiseton in South Yorkshire, is having a productive season — 43 winners sent out already, which is a yard clearly in good form. That makes Crystal Aurora something of an outlier in the stable rather than a reflection of it. She raced just yesterday, so she is very much in active campaign, and Furtado will be hoping that one small change — a different track, a different day — is all it takes to get her off the mark.