Miners Gamble

What makes the numbers slightly more puzzling is where Miners Gamble has been competing. The yard has been placing the horse predominantly in Class 5 races — the kind of race designed to give horses like this a fair chance — and yet that record reads 0 wins from 9 attempts at that level. You'd expect this to be the happy hunting ground; instead it's been a blank. The best performances have come at a mile and one or two furlongs, a distance that suits many horses with a touch of stamina, and that's where the sole career win came. At that trip, the record is 1 win from 7 races (14%), which is at least something to cling to.

Jockey Ben Robinson partners the horse most often and has been aboard for 12 of those 25 races, winning once together — that's roughly 1 in every 12 rides. Brian Ellison, who trains Miners Gamble from his yard in Norton, North Yorkshire, is clearly capable of getting winners out — 47 this season alone — so the firepower exists. The horse just hasn't responded. Currently active and raced as recently as three days ago, Miners Gamble remains in the mix, but until something changes, each race feels like another search for a form that showed up once at Musselburgh and hasn't been seen since.