Grand Harbour

The most recent six races make for uncomfortable reading: two tenth-place finishes, followed by a fourth, a fifth, and then back-to-back sevenths. That is a horse that briefly showed a flicker of progress — the fourth and fifth suggested it might be finding its feet — before drifting back towards the middle of the pack. Grand Harbour raced just yesterday, so the team at Joe Ponting's yard in Wotton-Under-Edge clearly have not given up on finding the right opportunity.

Ponting's stable has sent out three winners this season, so the yard is capable of getting horses to the line first. The partnership with jockey Luke Morris has been given a fair crack — seven races together without a win — which is a decent sample size. At some point, the yard have to ask whether a different jockey or a different race might unlock something new. Grand Harbour has done almost all of its racing at Class 6, the lowest tier of British racing, and has still not managed a win from ten attempts at that level. That is the part that raises the real question: if a horse cannot win at the easiest level available, where does improvement come from?

There is no shame in being a horse that simply places — some horses earn their keep finishing second and third — but Grand Harbour has not even managed that consistently. Still only four years old, there is time yet, and the fact that the yard keeps running it, including a race just yesterday, suggests they believe there is a win in there somewhere. Whether Grand Harbour eventually proves them right is the one genuinely intriguing thing about its story so far.