Midnight Media

That said, context matters here. The yard sending it out — trained by the partnership of William Muir and Chris Grassick — has hit 21 winners already this season, which tells you this is not an operation short of ability or knowhow. Horses from a yard running that hot tend to be placed with a purpose, and when a young three-year-old with just two races to its name turns up again, it usually means the team believes there is more to come. Midnight Media raced just four days ago, so whatever they saw that day was enough to keep the horse ticking along rather than sending it back to the yard for a rethink.

Two races is a very small sample. Plenty of horses take three, four, or five outings before the penny drops, and a twelfth-place finish in one race tells you almost nothing on its own without knowing how competitive that field was. For now, Midnight Media is a horse whose story is still being written.