It's Good To Talk

The recent form makes for interesting reading. A second place in the most recent completed race shows it can mix it at the sharp end, and it raced just yesterday, so this is a horse that is very much in the thick of its season right now. The gaps marked in between suggest there were runs where the result wasn't recorded or the horse may not have finished, which can happen for all sorts of legitimate reasons — but the bookend of a placing first and a placing most recently suggests it tends to show up when it matters.

It runs out of the yard of Emmet Mullins, a trainer based in Bagenalstown, County Carlow, who has had a productive season with 31 winners already on the board. That is a busy, in-form operation, which matters more than people might realise — horses trained by yards firing on all cylinders tend to arrive at the track fit, well-prepared, and ready to run their best race. It's Good To Talk is not some forgotten animal at the back of the string. It is being kept active and pointed at races, which suggests the team believes there is a win in it.

Zero wins from four races is an honest summary of where things stand, but three places from those same four races tells a different story underneath the headline. This is a horse that keeps finding its way into the frame. At some point, keeping finding the frame turns into winning the race — and with a trainer in this kind of form, that