Finn Ironside

Finn's recent form has been mixed but not discouraging. He's won 2 of his last 6 races, most recently last week, and that win at Newcastle came after a sequence that included a second place and a couple of mid-field efforts. That's the pattern of a horse who shows up, runs his race, and occasionally gets his nose in front. He thrives on normal ground conditions—winning 3 of 12 races on such surfaces, a 25 percent win rate—and performs best when tackling distances between seven furlongs and a mile, where he's won 5 of 20 races at the same 25 percent clip. Put him on firm ground over a longer trip and he becomes harder to back with confidence.

Ivan Furtado's Wiseton yard has been sending out winners all season, and Elle-May Croot, who rides Finn regularly, has done well aboard him, winning 2 of 7 races together. The partnership works. Where Finn struggles is in the better-class races: he has never won one of his 11 attempts at higher levels, which is a clear ceiling on his ambitions. But that doesn't make him uninteresting—he's the sort of honest performer who will keep turning up at the right tracks, in the right conditions, and picking up his winners at Newcastle and places elsewhere. For a horse past his first youth, that's a perfectly decent way to make a living.