Love Like This

What makes that number — 15 places alongside the single win — so striking is what it tells you about the horse's character. Love Like This has consistently been good enough to finish in the frame, good enough to make the yard think another crack was worth it, but for years not quite good enough to get to the front first. That is a particular kind of frustrating horse to follow, and also a particular kind of compelling one.

The relationship with jockey John Aherne is worth noting, if only for its stubborn loyalty in the face of the numbers. Ten races together, zero wins. Most partnerships get quietly dissolved long before that point, yet here they are. Whether that changes now that the breakthrough has arrived remains to be seen.

The trainer is John Patrick Ryan, based in Templemore, County Tipperary, and the yard is in solid form — 21 winners on the board this season, which suggests a team that knows what it is doing. Ryan has kept faith with Love Like This through a lengthy winless run, and that patience has now been rewarded at least once.

The most encouraging thing right now is the recent form. Reading the last six runs from most recent backwards — third, fourth, first, third, fifth — you can see a horse that has been placing consistently and found its way to a win in the middle of that sequence just five weeks ago. Love Like This raced again only yesterday, which means this is very much an active campaign. At eight years old and with a career finally off the mark, the question is whether Kilbeggan was a one-off breakthrough or the start of something. The 15 places suggest the ability has always been there. The patience to keep going through 47 attempts before winning suggests something else entirely.