Harry Longabaugh

What the numbers tell you is that Harry Longabaugh has never once troubled the judge. In six attempts, it has not won a single race, nor finished second or third. The closest it has come to competitive form were those two seventh-place finishes early on, and a fifth — which briefly looked like progress — before the results took a turn for the worse, culminating in back-to-back 15ths and then yesterday's 12th. That is a difficult run of form by any measure.

Whether there is a corner to be turned is genuinely hard to say with what we know. What is certain is that Harry Longabaugh keeps coming back to the track, and in racing, that counts for something. The question the trainer will be asking is whether the right conditions or the right race simply haven't come along yet — or whether yesterday's run was the latest chapter in the same story.