Tuscan Hills

What has followed is harder to explain. Tuscan Hills has not won in six races since that Pontefract success — a run stretching back 21 months now. The recent form figures tell a stark story: finishing 16th, 6th, pulled up or unseated, 20th, 12th, and 5th in its last six outings. That is not a horse finding its level; that is a horse that has gone quiet after a bright start, and nobody quite knows when — or whether — it will spark back to life.

The overall record is two wins from nine races, which works out at roughly one win in every four and a half races, or a 22% win rate across the career. That is a decent ratio in isolation, and the fact that both wins came at Class 1 level suggests Tuscan Hills is genuinely capable when things click. Pontefract in particular seems worth remembering — that course has a notoriously tricky uphill finish that catches plenty of horses out, so winning there in a top-tier race was no fluke.

Jockey David Egan has been on board for five of Tuscan Hills' nine races, winning once together — that October Class 1. One win from five rides is a 20% partnership win rate, which is solid, though neither horse nor rider has been able to reproduce that result since. The operation is trained by Robson De Aguiar, based in Mullingar in County Westmeath, a yard that has sent out 16 winners this season and is clearly capable of producing results at the highest level.

Tuscan Hills raced just yesterday, so is clearly still being aimed at opportunities. The question hanging over every run right now is whether that Class 1 winner is still in there somewhere, waiting to resurface, or whether October 2024 will remain the high-water mark of the career.