Native Honey

Trained by Jim Goldie at his yard in Uplawmoor, Lanarkshire, Native Honey is in capable hands. Goldie's operation has sent out 88 winners this season alone, which tells you this is not a yard that struggles to get horses ready to win — so when a horse takes time, it tends to be the horse, not the training. Goldie has spoken openly about still figuring Native Honey out. He's a big horse who found Musselburgh's tight track tricky, and at Doncaster he was second but threw it away slightly by ducking right at the crucial moment. The talent is there; the consistency has been harder to find.

His best distance appears to be somewhere between seven furlongs and a mile, where he has won one of six races — a 17% win rate, or one in every six, which is comfortably his strongest part of the card. At Class 5 level, the entry point of competitive racing, he has won one from five (20%), suggesting that when the conditions suit and everything clicks, he is a genuine contender at that level. Regular jockey Amie Waugh has ridden him five times without a win between them, though that number alone does not tell the full story — Native Honey is clearly a horse that needs things to go his way.

His recent form makes interesting reading: a win, a fourth, a tenth, a seventh, a sixth, and a ninth in his last six runs. He raced just yesterday, which means Native Honey is being kept busy. The question now is whether the Ayr win was a glimpse of what he can do when everything falls right, or whether it becomes one of those results that stands alone in a career that promised more than it delivered. Goldie clearly believes there is another day like Ayr waiting around the corner. For Native Honey's sake, you hope he is right.