U Turn

The most recent form makes for interesting reading: finishing third, then a blank run in the middle, then third again, second, seventh, and that sole win. There's enough there to suggest U Turn is in decent nick right now — two thirds and a second from its last few completed runs points to a horse that's racing well without quite sealing the deal.

What might give the team some pause is the record at Class 4 level, which is where U Turn has spent most of its career. Six races at that level, zero wins. That's not a disaster — plenty of good horses take time to break through — but it does mean the Beverley win came as a genuine breakthrough rather than a routine follow-up to earlier success. Whether U Turn can reproduce it is the question worth watching.

Sean Kirrane has partnered the horse five times without getting to the winner's enclosure together, which is a frustrating blank for a combination that clearly gets plenty of opportunities. Behind the scenes, trainer Tim Easterby's yard at Great Habton in North Yorkshire has been in cracking form this season — 128 winners is a substantial number, the kind of output that tells you horses are leaving that yard fit, well, and ready to run. U Turn has been racing very recently, just a day ago at the time of writing, so it's clearly an active campaign. For a three-year-old still learning the game and trained by someone who clearly knows how to get horses to win, the hope is that Beverley was the start of something rather than a one-off.