Sunshine And Roses

The recent form gives a mixed picture. A third-place finish five runs ago hinted at promise, but that was followed by a ninth, then two fourths, and the last two outings have brought a twelfth and a seventh. The direction of travel, in other words, is the wrong way. Most of those runs have come at Class 5, the entry level of British racing, where Sunshine And Roses has been tried four times without winning once. That matters because Class 5 is where horses go when the aim is to find a race winnable enough to get off the mark. If a horse can't win there, questions start to mount.

The yard behind it, Jack Channon's operation at West Ilsley in Berkshire, is no backwater — 46 winners on the board this season tells you this is a stable that knows how to get horses to perform. That makes Sunshine And Roses something of a puzzle, because the talent around it is clearly there at trainer level. Whether the horse itself has a win in it remains the open question. It raced just yesterday, so the yard will have fresh information, and at three years old there is still time to turn the page. But eleven races in, the clock is ticking.