Harksman

The partnership with jockey James Best has been given every chance to click, spanning eight of those eleven races together, but the pair are yet to trouble the judge. That is not necessarily a reflection on Best, who is an experienced rider — some horses simply take a long time to find their feet, and others never quite do.

Trainer Martin Keighley operates out of Luckley in Gloucestershire and has had a productive season, sending out 19 winners. That shows the yard clearly knows how to get horses to perform, which makes Harksman something of a puzzle. He has typically been running in Class 5 company — the lowest tier of racing, where horses tend to compete who are either still developing or operating near the bottom of the ability ladder — yet even there, across five attempts, a win has not come. When a horse cannot win at the easiest level available, it raises genuine questions about whether the right conditions have simply not been found yet, or whether this is just where the ceiling sits.

At six years old and still searching for a breakthrough, time is not quite running out, but it is ticking. The one small note of optimism is that Harksman is clearly sound and active — racing as recently as yesterday — and a trainer with 19 winners this season is not going to keep running a horse without believing there is something to work with. The right race, on the right day, might still be out there. It just has not arrived yet.