Keeper Of Secrets

The recent form offers a faint trace of encouragement, but only if you squint. Those mid-table finishes of fourth and fourth in races four and five ago at least suggest the horse is running and competing, rather than trailing in at the back. But bookending those with a pair of sevenths and a pair of eighths tells you this is a horse that has never seriously threatened to win a race. Not once in ten attempts has it managed to finish in the first three.

What makes this particularly striking is the level at which it's competing. Class 6 is the lowest tier of British racing — these are the most accessible races on the calendar, designed specifically to give horses like this a chance. And yet Keeper Of Secrets has gone to the well four times at that level and come up empty on every occasion. When a horse can't win at the bottom rung, you start to wonder whether racing is simply the wrong game for it altogether.

There is one thing working in its favour: the yard behind it. Ian Williams, based in Worcestershire, has sent out 96 winners already this season — that is an operation that clearly knows how to get horses to perform. Williams isn't a trainer who runs horses for the sake of it. The fact that Keeper Of Secrets raced just yesterday and remains in active training suggests the team still believes there is something to find, some race, some set of conditions, some day when everything clicks. That faith isn't nothing. But ten races is a long time to be waiting for the breakthrough, and right now, Keeper Of Secrets is keeping its secrets very, very close.