Moulane West

Recent runs tell the story of a horse still active and still trying. In the last six outings, Moulane West has finished out of the places only once (a 15th) and has picked up a pair of ninth-place finishes, along with a couple of sevenths and a tenth — the kind of form that keeps a horse in work but offers little hope of another breakthrough. Ridden most often by Phillip Enright, the partnership has yielded no wins from seven attempts together, a pairing that simply hasn't clicked. Mark Michael McNiff's yard at Strandhill, County Sligo, has sent out five winners this season, but Moulane West is unlikely to be among them. The horse raced just yesterday, a sign that the yard still believe there is effort worth getting out of it — or perhaps simply that a horse this modest has a place in a racing calendar that needs bodies in the paddock. Either way, Moulane West remains a fixture on Irish tracks, a veteran plodder for whom winning has always been a distant dream.