Lillistar

What Lillistar does do is stay in the race. Eleven places from 32 outings means it has finished in the top three or four nearly a third of the time — it shows up, competes, and makes its presence felt even when the win isn't coming. The recent form backs that up: in its last six races it has finished third, fifth, sixth, fifth, and second, which is the profile of a horse that's doing its job without quite finding the extra gear. That runner-up result is tantalising — second is the cruelest place in racing, close enough to matter, not close enough to count.

Most of Lillistar's racing has come over long distances, two miles and beyond, and that's where its one win came from. Across 18 races at that range it has won 1, a success rate of 6% — not spectacular, but more than double its overall average, which suggests the extra distance genuinely suits it. Longer races tend to reward stamina and a steady temperament over raw speed, and Lillistar seems to fit that mould. It has, however, drawn a blank in 11 races at Class 5 level — the bread-and-butter tier where many horses like this compete most often — which is a puzzling hole in the record given that's exactly where you'd expect the opportunities to come.

Trained by Micky Hammond at his Middleham yard in North Yorkshire, Lillistar is part of a team that has sent out 25 winners this season, so the operation clearly knows how to get horses to win. Jockey Aiden Brookes has been the regular partner, winning 1 from their 7 races together — a rate of 14%, or roughly 1 in 7, which is actually meaningfully above the horse's career average. Lillistar raced just yesterday, so it's very much in the thick of things.