Too Much Trevor

The numbers are bleak on the surface. Not a single win from 28 races, and 11 places to show for it all. At Class 6, which is the entry-level tier of British racing, he has run 20 times and still come up empty. His most recent six runs read 3-3-4-4-6-5 — consistently in the mix, occasionally threatening, never delivering. Jockey Kieran O'Neill has tried 11 times alongside him without a winner between them. And yet Too Much Trevor raced just yesterday, which tells you the team at Grace Harris's yard in Shirenewton, Gwent, have not given up on him.

Harris herself offers a telling glimpse into how this horse works. On his very first race, at Leicester, he was slowly away and dropped well behind before gradually finding his stride and finishing second in a three-horse field. Harris was clear that he would have been far closer to the winner had he jumped off properly — which is the sort of thing that sounds like an excuse until you watch it happen repeatedly. Some horses take a while to wake up. The worry with Trevor is that "a while" has now stretched to 28 races.

To be fair to the horse, placing in 11 of those 28 races — that's nearly 2 in every 5 outings — shows he is not disgracing himself. He runs on, he finishes close, he just does not win. Harris's yard has sent out 27 winners this season, so the operation around him is clearly functioning. The question is whether Trevor himself ever will.

Whether he eventually breaks through or becomes one of racing's most stubborn nearly-men, he has at least earned a kind of cult status. Some horses are defined by what they win. Too Much Trevor, so far, is defined entirely by what he hasn't.