Misteroddsocks

What makes the numbers a little puzzling is the partnership with jockey Jack Quinlan. The two have raced together nine times without a win between them — and yet it was Quinlan in the saddle for that Fontwell victory in April. Whether the previous eight blanks were just bad luck or something more is hard to say, but a jockey-horse combination that goes nine races before finding the winner's enclosure is not exactly one that screams inevitability.

Trainer Ben Case, based in Edgcote in Northamptonshire, has had 10 winners on the board this season, so the yard is ticking along. The curious detail is that Misteroddsocks has run eight times at Class 5 — the bread-and-butter level of British racing, where the competition is at its most accessible — and the Fontwell win is nowhere in that tally. Zero wins from eight attempts at that level. It found its moment somewhere else on the card, which is either a quirk of the calendar or a genuine clue about where it runs best.

Raced just one day ago, Misteroddsocks is very much an active horse right now. It is not a horse that has set the world alight — one win and five places from 14 races is a career that lives mostly in the frame rather than the winner's enclosure — but it is a horse that arrives at its next race in the best form of its life, trained by a yard that is winning races this season, and with a course win already on its record at Fontwell. Sometimes that is exactly enough.