Desert Champion

The Chelmsford win looked like a breakthrough. But then the handicapper — the official who adjusts how much weight horses carry to level the playing field — bumped him up 10 pounds in response. That's a significant penalty, and according to trainer Paul Midgley, it was probably the moment things unravelled. Desert Champion hasn't come close to matching that form since. His last six results make for grim reading: three eighth-place finishes, a seventh, another eighth, and one second place — that runner-up spot the only glimmer in a long, frustrating stretch without a win now stretching 15 months.

Midgley, who trains out of Westow in North Yorkshire and has had a productive season with 39 winners from his yard, is candid about where things stand. The horse ran well enough in his first couple of outings for the stable, but hasn't reproduced that promise. There's also a genuine question hanging over him: does he perform better on the artificial all-weather surfaces, like Chelmsford, than he does on grass? That's not a trivial distinction — some horses have a strong preference, and figuring that out could be the key to unlocking whatever is left in the tank.

He raced just yesterday, so he's very much in active training, and jockey Mark Winn has partnered him six times without a win between them. At the level he typically competes at — Class 5, which is the lower end of the sport — he has won 1 from 8 races, or about 1 in every 8. That's not embarrassing, but it's not a horse making a mockery of his grade either. Desert Champion is the kind of horse that keeps the yard hopeful and keeps punters cautious. The win is in there somewhere. Whether the conditions, the weight, and the form all align again is another matter entirely.