Rain

The Harty yard has been in decent form this season, sending out 17 winners, so Rain is operating in a setup that knows how to get horses ready to win. The challenge is that Rain has made it look harder than most. Over the distances where this horse is most at home — between a mile and six furlongs and two miles — the record reads 1 win from 14 races, a 7% win rate. That's once in every fourteen attempts at the trips that should suit best, which tells you this isn't a horse that dominates, but one that competes honestly without often getting its nose in front.

The regular partnership with jockey Nathan Crosse has yet to click in the winner's column — 0 wins from 8 races together — though the pair clearly keep getting chances, which suggests the team believes the combination can work. Recent form makes sobering reading: a win back in September has been followed by a seventh, a seventh, a fourteenth, and most recently a run just one day ago. The Galway win now sits eight months in the past, and Rain hasn't been able to back it up since. Still, a horse still racing at seven, still being pointed at races by a yard with winners on the board this season, hasn't been written off. The question is whether that Galway day was a glimpse of what Rain can do — or simply the high watermark of a career that has always asked more questions than it has answered.