Dangerous Touch

The recent form makes for interesting reading. Back-to-back second-place finishes in its last two completed races show the horse running well and finishing close — just not quite well enough. Those two placings come after a couple of runs where it failed to finish in the frame, so there is a pattern here of inconsistency rather than steady improvement. Jockey Sean Bowen has been in the saddle for 12 of those 15 races without a win between them, which is a long partnership to maintain without a victory — a sign that trainer Olly Murphy clearly believes the right day is still coming rather than cutting his losses.

Murphy himself is operating at a high level this season, having sent out 144 winners from his yard in Wilmcote, Warwickshire. That is a genuinely productive operation, which makes Dangerous Touch something of an outlier — a horse that keeps finding the places but not the wins in a yard that clearly knows how to get horses over the line. When a trainer of that calibre keeps running a horse, it usually means they see something worth waiting for.

Dangerous Touch typically competes in Class 4 races — a solid mid-tier level, not the glamour end of the sport but competitive enough that going winless through 12 races at that grade is a real puzzle given the placed efforts. Raced just 11 days ago and still active, the horse is clearly fit and being kept busy. At seven years old, it is not a young project still finding its feet — patience has already been considerable. The question now is whether the pieces finally fall into place, or whether Dangerous Touch ends up as one of those horses that is perpetually competitive, endlessly close, and somehow never quite first.