Katzoff

What makes this situation genuinely curious is who is training him. Dan Skelton's yard at Alcester in Warwickshire is one of the most productive operations in British racing right now — 198 winners sent out this season alone. That is an extraordinary number. When a trainer is firing in winners at that rate, a horse sitting on 0 from 40 in the same yard stands out. It is not that Skelton cannot get horses to win; he clearly can, repeatedly and at scale. Katzoff simply has not been one of them.

Tom Harney has ridden the horse five times and drawn a blank on every occasion, so there is no obvious answer hiding in a change of jockey either. Recent form tells a similarly modest story — a second place finish a few runs back is the highlight, surrounded by mid-field finishes and the occasional pulled-up or unseated run (marked as dashes in the records). The horse raced just one day ago and is clearly still active, still trying.

At nine years old, Katzoff is not a young horse with time on his side. The window for a first win is narrowing. But someone at that busy, successful Alcester yard keeps putting him in races, which suggests they see something worth persisting with — or at the very least, something worth running. Whether that faith is eventually rewarded is the only remaining question this horse has left to answer.