The Long Walk

What makes the partnership with jockey Jonjo O'Neill Jr slightly curious is that across six races together, the pair are yet to win. That is not necessarily a damning verdict — horses and riders can take time to click, and O'Neill Jr is an accomplished jockey — but it does suggest the combination is still searching for its ideal conditions or moment. The trainer, meanwhile, is clearly in strong form: the Cheltenham-based yard of Jonjo and A J O'Neill has sent out 51 winners this season, so the platform is there for any horse in the string to take its chance.

The Long Walk typically competes at Class 4 level, which sits in the middle tier of British racing — not the headline events, but competitive enough that winning is genuinely hard. At that level, the record reads one win from six races, or roughly one in every six, which is roughly in line with what you might expect from a horse finding its feet. The recent form does show a third-place finish and then that Warwick victory, so there are signs of a horse coming into form rather than drifting away from it. With a race just yesterday, this is a horse very much still in the thick of things — and a stable in this kind of form will be looking to make the most of it.