Lady Bouquet

Her trainer Philip Kirby, who runs a competitive yard in East Appleton, North Yorkshire, has shown faith in her by keeping her in work, and his team has sent out 36 winners this season. Lady Bouquet last won at Musselburgh six weeks ago on 24 August, a victory that suggests she still has the engine to finish first when the opportunity presents itself. The challenge now is finding those opportunities more often. Her recent form has been mixed—she was fourth only a day ago, but before that her results read 9-1-3-8-11, a sequence that hints at occasional sparkle amid stretches of nothing particularly special. Most riders have either found ways to get her home or they haven't; curiously, Andrew Mullen, who has ridden her six times, has never managed a win aboard her, which is the kind of small detail that sometimes means a change of rider at the next opportunity might freshen things up. For a horse at this level, settling into a pattern and finding the right races remains the path to the occasional success, and Lady Bouquet seems to be following it.