Jungle Wood

His trainer, Sara Bradstock, runs a relatively small yard out of Wantage in Oxfordshire that has sent out four winners this season — and Jungle Wood accounts for one of them. Bradstock has spoken candidly about the horse's early difficulties, explaining that his introduction to hurdle racing was not exactly ideal: the ground dried out too quickly before one intended run, and then his actual debut over hurdles came at Kempton against three sharp, race-fit summer horses who went off at a pace he had no hope of matching. For a horse seeing hurdles in public for the first time, it was an unfair baptism, and Bradstock was clear that what looked like a poor result simply was not his fault.

He typically operates at Class 5 level — the bread-and-butter tier of British racing, where most horses spend the bulk of their careers — and at that level he has won 1 from 5, which works out at 20%, or roughly 1 in every 5 races. That is a perfectly respectable return. His recent form reads 5-7-3-1-3-3 from his last six races, with the 1 being that Worcester win. Since then, a fifth and a seventh suggest he has found things tougher, though he raced just yesterday, so he remains very much in action.

Worcester clearly suits him — it is where he finally broke his duck — and for a horse of his age and profile, finding a track and a race where everything clicks is half the battle. He is not a headline horse, but he is exactly the kind of honest, consistent animal that keeps smaller yards going through a season.