Smoker Bellamy

That single place came from the most recent form figures, and the trajectory is worth paying attention to. Reading those figures from oldest to most recent — 8, 6, 6, 4, 2, 11 — you can see a horse that was gradually knocking on the door before that runner-up finish, only to then trail in last time out. Racing can be a cruel and unpredictable sport, and one poor run doesn't necessarily tell the whole story, particularly for a young horse still learning the ropes.

What does provide genuine optimism is the yard behind Smoker Bellamy. Dr Richard Newland and Jamie Insole, training out of Elmbridge in Worcestershire, have been in red-hot form this season — 51 winners and counting. That's not a quiet operation running horses for the fun of it; that's a yard firing on all cylinders, and the fact that Smoker Bellamy is still in active training, having raced just one day ago, suggests the team haven't given up on finding the right opportunity to get this horse into the winner's enclosure. Trainers of that calibre don't keep running a horse that isn't showing them something at home.

At three years old, Smoker Bellamy is still a work in progress, and plenty of horses take time to click. The patience of a yard with 51 winners behind them is worth something — they know what a horse needs to improve, and they clearly believe there's a race to be won somewhere down the line.