Raincloud

The numbers are difficult to dress up. At Class 4 level — solidly mid-tier racing, the kind of competitive everyday racing that makes up the backbone of the British calendar — Raincloud has gone 0 from 15, which is a long winless run at a grade that most horses of this type are expected to be competitive at. Regular partner Kieran O'Neill has ridden the horse seven times together and the pair have yet to find the winner's enclosure.

Recent form shows a couple of double-figure finishes followed by back-to-back eleventh-place results, which tells you the horse has been struggling to land a blow. The horse last raced 55 days ago and has had a short break since, which sometimes gives a trainer the chance to regroup and try something different — a new distance, a change in tactics, or simply fresher legs on the day. Whether that changes anything here remains to be seen.

What keeps a horse like Raincloud in training at six, having never won, is a question worth asking. The honest answer is probably hope — five place finishes across 36 races means the yard have occasionally had reason to think a win was coming. But 36 races is a long wait, and at this stage of a career, the window for finding that elusive first victory is not getting any wider.