L'Air du Large

The recent form makes for difficult reading. A fourth-place finish six races ago is as close as L'Air du Large has come to threatening the leaderboard, and since then the results have trended in the wrong direction, with finishes of 7th, 13th, and 9th before two unfinished efforts. That kind of sequence suggests a horse that hasn't yet found the right conditions or race to bring the best out of it. At Class 5 — the entry-level tier of British racing — L'Air du Large has run three times without a win, which means even at the most accessible level of competition, the breakthrough hasn't come.

On the plus side, the yard behind the horse is in decent form. Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero, based at Oldcastle in Cheshire, have sent out 43 winners this season, which shows there's plenty of ability in the stable. The fact that a yard operating at that level keeps running L'Air du Large suggests they still believe there's a performance in there somewhere. The horse raced just yesterday, so the yard — the team — are clearly not giving up, and in racing, sometimes all it takes is one race on the right day for everything to click.