Tex

The five-year-old has been frustratingly consistent in the wrong direction — always there or thereabouts, never quite over the line. His last six races tell the story neatly: a string of thirds and seconds, bookended by a finishing position of twelfth in his most recent run just yesterday. He has come close enough, enough times, for his trainer George Baker to believe the winning moment is coming. It just has not arrived yet.

Baker, who operates out of Epsom Downs in Surrey and has sent out 14 winners already this season, is characteristically patient about it. He has described Tex as a big, raw horse who simply was not ready as a youngster — a horse who hit the front in races but could not sustain the effort when it mattered. That is a specific and telling detail: it suggests the problem was not talent but physical development, the kind of thing that time, rather than training, tends to fix. Baker has already had Tex's breathing looked at — a minor wind procedure that he felt the horse could benefit from — and he points out that his yard has previous with horses who have bloomed at five, six, even seven years old. Patient owners make that possible, and it sounds like Tex has them.

He will not race again until next year, which means the team is taking the long view. Whether that patience pays off is the question. Six places without a win is a record that could read two ways: a horse that keeps falling short, or a horse that keeps showing up. Baker clearly believes it is the latter, and with a wind tweak in the bank and another winter's strengthening ahead, next spring's early fixtures will be worth watching.