Hostelry

The place that suits her best is Carlisle, where she has won 3 times from just 8 visits. To win more than a third of your races at any track is the kind of record that makes trainers keep coming back, and sure enough her most recent victory came there as recently as last August. Hostelry also has a clear preference for a decent surface — on normal ground she wins 1 in 4, and on slightly soft ground the same again, 2 from 8. She is not a horse who needs anything extreme; she just wants conditions to be fair.

Trainer Ruth Carr, whose yard at Stillington in North Yorkshire has sent out 63 winners already this season, is candid about what lies ahead. Last year was Hostelry's best — five wins and a string of places — but Carr acknowledges that horses who peak in one season sometimes find it harder the next, even when their official rating drops back to where it should theoretically be manageable. It is one of racing's recurring puzzles: form is not always a number, and a horse that has done a lot of winning can become harder to place or simply less sharp the following year.

Her recent form bears that out. She has not won in her last six races, with finishes of 10th, 10th, 6th, 4th, and 5th suggesting she is competitive without quite getting there. Jockey Joanna Mason, who has partnered her 17 times for a single win together, keeps the booking, which speaks to consistency if not fireworks. A race at Beverley on 23 April is the immediate target — a track where she has won before. At nine years old and with a long career behind her, Hostelry does not need to reinvent herself. She just needs one day when everything clicks again.