Miss Nightfall

That Windsor win was 22 months ago now, and the six races since have brought a string of near-misses and disappointing finishes — a couple of fifths, a seventh, and two efforts well back in the field. The most recent form reads 2-5-9-10-7-5, which is the shape of a horse that flashes promise one day and goes missing the next. She is four years old and still working things out, it seems.

Where she does look most at home is over the shorter distances. In the five-furlong to six-and-a-half-furlong range, she has won 1 from 4 races — that's 1 in every 4 attempts, which is a genuinely solid return at her level and suggests the sprint trips suit her far better than anything longer. The problem is that she typically competes at Class 2, which means one of the better grades of race in Britain, and at that level she has drawn a blank in all six attempts. That is not a failure of character so much as a reflection of the company she keeps — these are proper racehorses she is up against.

She is trained by James Fanshawe at Newmarket, one of the historic homes of British racing, and his yard has been in fine form this season with 44 winners already sent out. That is a stable operating with real confidence. Miss Nightfall raced just yesterday, so she is very much in the thick of things — no resting on whatever laurels she has. Whether another win is coming depends on whether the yard can find a spot where the shorter distance and a slightly softer level of competition line up at the right moment. The ingredients are there. She just needs the right race on the right day.