Sunwalk

Recent form makes for tough reading too. Looking at his last six runs, the best he has managed is a second-place finish, with the others trailing off into mid-field and unplaced efforts. He has not won in any of those six races, and two of those runs ended without completing — marked as dashes in the form book, which typically signals something went wrong on the day. For a horse still racing at eight years old, you want to see signs of life, and right now they are flickering rather than burning.

There are small reasons to stay interested, though. Sunwalk shows his best form when racing at a distance between a mile and three furlongs and a mile and four furlongs — a slightly longer trip that suits horses who stay well rather than quicken early. At that distance, he has won 1 from 4 races, a 25% win rate, which is genuinely respectable. It suggests he is not without ability when conditions and distance align. His most regular partner, jockey Andrew Slattery, has won 1 of their 5 races together — 20%, or roughly 1 in every 5 rides — which is a solid connection worth noting.

He is trained by Seamus Neville out of Bridgetown in County Wexford, a yard that has sent out three winners this season and clearly knows how to get horses competitive. Sunwalk raced just one day ago, so he is very much in active training and being kept busy. Whether another win is coming is hard to say — a horse who last won over four years ago is carrying a burden of proof. But he ran second not that long ago, and in the right race at the right distance, stranger things have happened.