Spinning Dancer

The horse tends to line up in Class 6 races, which are the entry-level contests of British racing, the kind where you would expect a horse to have its best chance of winning. Yet even here, Spinning Dancer has drawn a blank across 14 races at that level. Recent form offers little encouragement either: the last six runs have produced three fourth-place finishes followed by a slide to three finishes in sixth and seventh. That is not a horse knocking on the door — it is a horse that keeps finishing in the middle of the pack.

Jockey Kieran O'Neill has been in the saddle for six of those races and is yet to ride Spinning Dancer into the winner's enclosure. The partnership has had its chances but so far has nothing to show for it. The yard, trainer J S Moore's operation at Upper Lambourn in Berkshire, has sent out 17 winners this season, so the ability to get horses winning is clearly there — Spinning Dancer simply has not been one of them.

The horse raced just yesterday, so it is very much active and presumably the yard still believe there is a win to be found somewhere. At four years old, there is still time to turn things around. But with 19 races and a single place to its name, Spinning Dancer needs something to change — whether that is a different trip, different ground, or simply a day when everything clicks.