Gortmore Lady

Her most recent run came just yesterday, and her last six races show a third-place finish as the highlight, with two blanks and a fifth and seventh in behind. There is something there — the third suggests she can get herself into a race — but the gaps in form make it hard to build a convincing case that a win is imminent. Her regular partner in the saddle is jockey E Walsh, who has ridden her 13 times without getting their partnership into the winner's spot. That is a long working relationship with nothing to show for it in the results column, though it does suggest the team believes in keeping things consistent rather than chopping and changing.

She is trained by Ciaran Murphy out of Mullingar in County Westmeath, and the yard is having a productive season with 18 winners already on the board. That context matters: Murphy clearly knows how to get horses to win, which means Gortmore Lady's blank sheet is unlikely to be down to mismanagement. Some horses simply find a way to be good without quite being good enough, and at six years old, with this amount of racing under her belt, the honest conclusion is that she is a horse who gives her the yard something to cheer without ever quite delivering the main event. Whether that changes is the question worth watching.