Roots In Touche

That breakthrough win at Nottingham five weeks ago appears to have been a genuine moment of promise rather than a one-off. The horse had already shown enough to finish placed before tasting victory, and since then has remained competitive—it ran in the places just over a week ago and again in its most recent outing a day ago. The inconsistency is typical of a young horse still learning its trade: a fifth-place finish sits alongside those closer efforts, the kind of mixed results you see from two-year-olds testing their limits across different tracks and distances.

Adrian Keatley's Ryedale yard in North Yorkshire has had a productive season, sending out 43 winners, so Roots In Touche is in the right environment to develop. For a horse this young with just a single win to its name, the real test now is whether it can translate those flashes of form into something more consistent. The next few months will tell whether Nottingham was a turning point or simply an early bright spot.