Love Bomb

The recent form makes for uncomfortable reading: in the last six races, the best finish has been a seventh, with a tenth thrown in for good measure. That sequence — 10, 7, 4, 11, 9, 8 — tells the story of a horse that has found a level and is struggling to beat it. The one bright spot in all of this is a single placed finish across the career, which at least suggests there is some ability in there somewhere, even if it rarely translates into anything tangible on race day.

Love Bomb is trained by W McCreery out of Rathbride in Co Kildare, a yard that has sent out 21 winners this season — so the operation clearly knows how to get horses winning. The fact that Love Bomb hasn't contributed to that tally is not for lack of professional support. The horse raced just one day ago, so it is very much in active campaign, and McCreery is evidently still looking for the right opportunity to coax another performance out of it. Whether that comes soon is the question the form book is currently answering in the negative.