Haughty

Her recent form makes for grim reading. In her last six races she has finished ninth, twelfth, eighth, thirteenth, and eighth again — the kind of mid-field placings that suggest she is running but not running well enough to threaten the winner. She has not crossed the line first in 38 months. What little success she has managed has come over distances between a mile and a furlong and a mile and two furlongs, where she has won once in eight attempts — still a poor record, but marginally better than elsewhere. When stepped up to Class 5 races, the most competitive company she regularly faces, she has managed nothing: zero wins from four races.

With a win rate of only 4 percent — winning once in every 25 races — Haughty is a horse that most professional trainers would have moved on from long ago. Yet she was racing just a day ago, still plugging away in the lower divisions. There is something almost stubborn about her persistence: not good enough to win with any real consistency, but apparently still good enough to find a race somewhere. She is the sort of horse that holds her modest place in the sport through sheer longevity rather than talent.