Daring To Dream

The most telling number is the partnership with jockey James Best, who has been aboard for five of those nine races without a single win between them. That is a combination that has been given plenty of chances to click — and hasn't. Whether the issue lies with the horse, the races being chosen, or simply bad luck is hard to say from the outside, but five attempts together with nothing to show for it is a pattern worth noting.

Harriet Dickin trains Daring To Dream from her yard in Midford, Somerset — a small operation that has sent out three winners this season, which suggests the stable is capable of getting horses to the line first. Daring To Dream has simply not been one of them. The horse has run three times at Class 4 level — a middle tier of British racing, not the very top but not the easiest races either — and has drawn a blank in all three. A recent run of form reading 4-8-6-3-7-4 tells a mixed story: a third-place finish in there shows the ability to be competitive, but the string of mid-pack results on either side of it suggests consistency has been the problem.

For a horse that has never won, the question any racing fan would ask is simple: when does the yard start looking for easier opportunities? Racing has a way of humbling both horses and humans who dream too big too soon. The name Daring To Dream is either perfectly fitting or quietly ironic, depending on how you look at it.