Cut The Rope

That single win came at Naas in January 2023, now 42 months ago, and it remains the high-water mark of a career that has been defined more by persistence than by dominance. Since then, Cut The Rope has not returned to the winner's enclosure in six races, with recent form reading 4th, 13th, 12th, a blank, 5th, and 6th. There have been glimpses — a couple of those placed efforts suggest the horse is not entirely out of its depth — but the wins have simply not followed.

Where Cut The Rope does show something genuinely worth watching is over longer distances. At 1m6f to 2m, it has won 1 race from 5, which translates to a 20% win rate — winning 1 in every 5 races at that trip. That is four times better than its overall record, and it matters. It tells you that when the conditions suit — a proper test of stamina, a distance that asks real questions — this horse is a different proposition. The trainer, Eddie and Patrick Harty, based at the Curragh in Co Kildare, know that too. Their yard has sent out 16 winners already this season, so they clearly have the horses performing, and keeping Cut The Rope active — it raced just one day ago — suggests they still believe there is a race to be won.

At 7 years old, Cut The Rope is not a horse with a mountain of time left to add to that solitary win. But it is fit, it is being entered, and over the right distance on the right day, the form book says it can compete. For a horse that has contested 20 races and walked away with just one win, that is not nothing — it is the whole reason you keep running them.