Marra Donna

The recent form is actually encouraging if you squint at it the right way. Reading the last six runs from most recent to oldest — third, ninth, fifth, fourth, second, third — there is a horse that has largely been in the conversation. That ninth is the outlier, the kind of run every horse has that you quietly try to forget. The second place is the one that lingers: close enough to touch, not close enough to matter.

Sean D Bowen has been in the saddle for five of those twelve races and has not yet found the combination that produces a win — nought from five together. That does not reflect badly on either horse or jockey so much as it reflects a horse still searching for its moment. Trainer Ollie Sangster, based in Marlborough in Wiltshire, has had 46 winners on the board this season, so this is clearly a yard that knows how to get horses to win. Marra Donna is the project that has not yet clicked.

The level Marra Donna competes at — Class 5, which sits near the lower end of the racing ladder — means these are races it should, on paper, be capable of winning. Five runs at that level, five blanks. At some point a horse either finds its race or forces the yard to rethink. Marra Donna raced just yesterday, so whatever is being tried, it is being tried urgently and often. The search goes on.