Purple Sky

That win came over a mile and three or four furlongs, which is where Purple Sky shows its best form. Over that trip, the record reads one win from six races — around 1 in 6 — which tells you this horse at least has a distance it can be competitive over, even if the results elsewhere have been hard to come by. Recent form makes for sobering reading: across the last six races, the best finish has been fourth, with a couple of sevenths and an eighth in there too. There is nothing in that sequence to suggest a revival is imminent.

Joe Ponting, who trains out of Wotton-Under-Edge in Gloucestershire, has sent out three winners this season. It is a small yard operating at the quieter end of the sport, and Purple Sky has typically been running at Class 6 — the lowest rung of British racing — where, perhaps surprisingly, the record shows no wins from three attempts. That detail is a little telling: even at the most accessible level of the game, this horse has not been able to convert.

Racing just one day ago, Purple Sky is clearly still active and still being campaigned, which says something for the persistence of the team around this horse. Whether there is another win in the locker remains to be seen, but with a record of 1 from 19 and form figures pointing firmly in the wrong direction, the bar for optimism is set quite high.