Sir David

His recent form makes for interesting reading. Glancing back through his last six runs — 7th, 6th, 1st, 4th, 9th, 12th — you can see both the breakthrough and the reality that he has not been able to build on it since. That win sits like a single bright spot in an otherwise modest sequence, and the two runs after it have gone in the wrong direction. Still, he has placed three times in his career overall, so he is not without ability — he just finds ways to finish second, third, or fourth more often than he finds ways to win.

Where things get more promising is over a distance of seven furlongs to a mile. At that range he has won 1 from 4 races — that is 25%, or 1 in every 4, which is a dramatically better picture than his overall record suggests. For context, winning a quarter of your races at any level is genuinely solid. The problem has been that most of his racing has come at Class 5 level — the lower end of the British racing ladder — where he has run six times without winning once. That is a strange contradiction: better at a specific trip, but unable to translate it into results at a level he should, in theory, be competitive at.

Tinkler's yard has sent out 37 winners this season, so this is not a team short of confidence or knowhow. Sir David raced just yesterday, which means he is very much in active training. Whether his Carlisle win turns out to be a turning point or an isolated moment of form is the question worth following.