Elman

What makes the situation interesting is where Elman sits. Denis Gerard Hogan's yard in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary is clearly no backwater operation — 58 winners sent out this season tells you this is a stable that knows how to get horses ready to win. That makes Elman something of a puzzle. The talent and the infrastructure are evidently there around him, but he simply has not converted any of his chances into a finish in the frame.

The recent form figures do show a flicker of something. Buried in the last six runs are two double-figure finishes — a tenth and an eleventh — which at least suggests he is completing his races and finding his way around a track. He raced just yesterday, so he is an active runner and the yard clearly have not given up. The question is whether that persistence pays off before his record becomes a longer and longer list of near-misses that were not even that near.