Invincible Melody

The recent form makes for uncomfortable reading. In its last six races the best result was a second place, with finishes of 10th, 10th, 7th, 9th, and 7th filling out the rest of the picture. That second place is the bright spot in an otherwise flat run of results, and it is worth remembering that finishing second is genuinely hard — there are usually a dozen or more horses in these fields. But the trend since then has been backwards rather than forwards, and the last four runs have all ended in the bottom half of the field.

Most of Invincible Melody's racing has come at Class 5, which is the entry level of the British racing ladder — the kind of race where horses are supposed to find winning opportunities. Seven of those 15 Class 5 races have been alongside regular jockey Jack Dace, and the pair are still looking for their first win together from those seven attempts. That is not unusual in itself — plenty of good partnerships take time to click — but combined with the wider record, it adds to the sense of a horse that has not yet found its moment.

The trainer, Ewan Whillans, operates out of Hawick in the Scottish Borders, and the yard has been in solid form this season with 28 winners sent out. That suggests the stable knows how to get horses to win, which makes Invincible Melody something of an outlier. Whether Whillans has a plan to unlock whatever is holding this horse back — a different trip, a change of conditions, a new target — is the question worth watching. Racing is full of horses that found themselves late. At four, there is still time.