Snapius

James Owen, based at Newmarket, picked Snapius up for just £2,500 — a price that says everything about how little was expected of him. Owen's yard has sent out 204 winners this season, so this is no small operation, and the fact that a trainer of that calibre spent time working out what made this cheap purchase tick is telling. The answer, it turned out, was hurdles. Owen had been running him on the flat, but switching him over obstacles changed things entirely. He won at Lingfield before Christmas and then followed it up with a convincing victory at Huntingdon in March, just two months ago, where jockey Tom Bellamy — brought in specifically because Owen trusted him on the track — gave him a polished ride on ground he enjoyed.

The ground question matters with Snapius. He has won 2 of his 11 races on normal conditions, which is 18%, or roughly 1 in every 5 — a genuinely solid return. But when conditions turn wet and muddy, the confidence evaporates. His trainer has admitted as much, noting after a run at Cork that Snapius would have hated the soft ground that day, and that even a placed finish in those conditions was more down to a clever ride than anything the horse found naturally.

His preferred trip of a mile and three or four furlongs suits a horse that needs time to travel and build momentum, and at that distance he has won 1 from 5, which is 20% — 1 in every 5 — his best return at any distance. One slight puzzle is his regular partnership with Ben Bromley, who has yet to get a win from seven rides together. That's not necessarily damning — seven races is a small sample — but it stands in contrast to the results when Owen has chosen to bring in outside riders for specific occasions.

Raced just yesterday and still active, Snapius is a horse that looks better understood now than he ever has been. At seven, with his yard in fine form and his the yard mixing flat and hurdles races strategically, he may yet squeeze more wins out of those low expectations.