Mr Globalist

His recent form tells a consistent, if frustrating, story. In his last six races, he has finished fifth, fifth, sixth, fifth, fifth, and sixth. There is almost something mathematical about it — reliably mid-pack, reliably just out of the prizes, as though he has found a comfortable cruising altitude and has no particular interest in climbing higher. He is currently active, having raced very recently, so this is a pattern that continues in real time.

Mr Globalist competes in Class 5 races, which sit at the lower end of the racing ladder — these are the entry-level contests where horses who have not been winning elsewhere tend to gather. You might expect that to work in his favour, but even here he has drawn a blank, failing to win in nine attempts at that level. That is not a reflection on the quality of the yard — trainer Lizzie Quinlan, based at Bolton Mill in Cumbria, has sent out four winners already this season, so the operation clearly knows how to get a horse to the line first. Mr Globalist simply has not been one of them.

Sean Quinlan, who rides him most regularly, has partnered the horse in five of those races without a win between them. It would be unfair to read too much into that — the jockey can only work with what he has got. What the record does suggest is that Mr Globalist is a horse who turns up, does his job, and finishes somewhere in the middle of the pack with remarkable regularity. For a horse with 35 races to his name and not a single win, he has earned a strange kind of distinction — he may be one of the most consistent nearly-horses in training. The question of whether that changes any time soon remains very much open.