Rage Of Thunder

The recent form actually tells a more encouraging story than the raw numbers suggest. Look at the last six races in reverse order and you see a horse that has been knocking on the door repeatedly: a win, then a fifth, then three consecutive seconds, and most recently a fifteenth. That sequence of placed efforts around the single victory shows a horse capable of competing — the question is whether it can translate that consistency into winning again. One win from 14 races is a 7% win rate, roughly 1 in every 14 attempts, which is modest, but horses that place as often as Rage Of Thunder are not hopeless cases — they just find winning difficult.

Part of the puzzle might be the level at which Rage Of Thunder typically competes. Six of those races have come at Class 5, which is towards the lower end of the racing ladder, and the horse has yet to win at that level — zero wins from six tries. That is a curious statistic. You might expect a horse to find it easier at the less competitive end, but Rage Of Thunder's sole win actually came elsewhere, suggesting it may need specific conditions to produce its best.

Tom Queally has been in the saddle for seven of those 14 races together, and their partnership has produced the one win — a win rate of 14%, or roughly 1 in every 7 rides together. That is actually above the horse's overall average, which hints that Queally has a decent feel for what makes this one tick. The yard behind the horse, Gary and Josh Moore at Lower Beeding in West Sussex, have been in superb form this season with 99 winners already sent out — so when they do pitch Rage Of Thunder into a race, they are doing so with plenty of horsepower behind the scenes. The talent in the stable is not in doubt. Whether Rage Of Thunder can find a moment to match it is the thing worth watching.