Hang In There

His record in the top two tiers of British racing is quietly remarkable. He has won four Class 2 races and a Class 1 — one of the highest-level prizes the sport offers — and has done it across five different tracks. Worcester is the place he seems to love most, winning 2 of his 3 races there, but he has shown he can perform on different tracks and in different conditions. What really suits him is fast, dry ground: in those conditions he has won 2 from 3 races, a 67% record that is extraordinary. His trainer Emma Lavelle has said publicly that he runs a better race on quicker ground, and the numbers back that up completely.

The relationship between this horse and jockey Joe Anderson is one of the nicer details in this story. Anderson rides him at home every morning and has won 3 of their 14 races together — roughly 1 in every 5. Lavelle once joked that Anderson would move the horse into his house if he could. That kind of daily familiarity between a jockey and a horse genuinely matters: understanding how an animal thinks, how it settles into a race, when to push and when to wait. It shows up in results.

Lavelle trains out of Ogbourne Maizey in Wiltshire and has sent out 44 winners this season alone — a yard in seriously good form. After one of Hang In There's victories he described him as "very special" and said you don't get horses like that very often. He's right. His recent runs have been mixed — a win, then a string of mid-field finishes — but he raced just yesterday, which means he's still out there, still competing, still turning up. For a 12-year-old running against younger, fresher rivals in some of the sport's better races, that in itself deserves a round of applause.