Ingenious Stroke

That sole career victory came at Downpatrick in September 2022, and it remains the most recent time Ingenious Stroke has set foot on a racecourse — 43 months ago now, which in racing terms is an enormous gap. Three and a half years is long enough for a horse to go from promising young prospect to something of an unknown quantity. Whatever has kept this horse off the track for so long, the trainer, Henry De Bromhead, has clearly decided the time is right to find out what remains.

De Bromhead operates out of Knockeen in County Waterford and is one of the most respected names in the game. With 106 winners already on the board this season alone, his is a yard that knows how to prepare horses properly — so the fact that Ingenious Stroke is being brought back at all suggests there is genuine belief something is still there worth testing. The two runouts before the winning form — finishing ninth twice — are easy to overlook given how well this horse then performed in the five races that followed. The question now is simply whether, after such a long time away, that same horse shows up.