Hachiman

Where he does his best work is at the level where he is most regularly asked to compete. In Class 5 races — the bread-and-butter tier of British racing — he has won 1 from 5, which works out at 20%, or roughly 1 in every 5 attempts. That is a meaningful number. At that level, he is a genuine contender rather than an also-ran, and it suggests he is competitive when the conditions suit him, even if he has not converted that competitiveness into a win for nearly a year.

He runs out of Ruth Carr's yard in Stillington, North Yorkshire, a stable that has been in sharp form this season with 56 winners already on the board. Carr is known for placing her horses carefully, and Hachiman's record at Class 5 level suggests the team knows exactly what he is capable of and where he belongs. With a race just yesterday, he is clearly fit and active, and a return to somewhere like Lingfield — the track where he proved he could win — might be all it takes to remind everyone what he looked like that day in August.