Digital

The headline number is Newcastle. Three wins from 12 races at that track is genuinely impressive — winning 1 in every 4 races at a specific course tells you a horse has figured something out there, whether it is the track shape, the surface, or simply a familiarity built up over time. His most recent win came at Newcastle as recently as three months ago, so this is not a horse living off old glories. He turned up, did the job, and left. The other striking pattern is what he does on wet, muddy ground — 2 wins from just 5 races on soft or heavy ground means he has won 40% of the time when conditions get testing. That is a horse that thrives when others are struggling to stay on their feet.

His trainer, Ruth Carr, based up in Stillington in North Yorkshire, clearly knows exactly what she has. A jockey who rode him put it simply after a race at Hamilton: Carr told him Digital was in as good a form as he could possibly be. That is not the kind of thing a trainer says lightly, and from a yard that has sent out 63 winners this season, it carries real weight. His most regular partner, jockey James Sullivan, has ridden him 23 times and won 3 of them — roughly 1 in every 8 rides together.

The one curiosity in Digital's record is that his best-quality win — a Class 2 race, one step below the very top level in Britain — came back in February 2022 at Southwell, and it was also his first career win. He announced himself at the top and has spent the years since finding his level, which has settled mainly at Class 4 — the bread-and-butter tier of British racing, where he has won just 1 from 16 races. His last six runs have not produced a win, and the most recent form figures show plenty of mid-field finishes. But he raced just yesterday, he is clearly in good health, and with Newcastle on the horizon and soft ground always a possibility, it would be unwise to write him off entirely.