Wearelongterm

The recent form gives a mixed picture. Over the last six runs — reading back from the most recent — the sequence reads 5th, 3rd, 6th, 2nd, 3rd, then a gap where the horse didn't finish or didn't run. A second and two thirds in there suggest Wearelongterm isn't disgraced, but hasn't been able to close the deal when it mattered. The horse had a short break of around six weeks before its most recent race, which can sometimes freshen a horse up, though it didn't produce a win on this occasion.

The partnership with jockey Henry Brooke is one of the most familiar features of Wearelongterm's career — Brooke has ridden the horse 11 times, more than half of its total races. That kind of loyalty between horse and rider usually means the team believes in the combination. But 11 races together without a single win is a long run of near-misses, and at some point the question becomes whether the horse simply lacks that final gear.

Trainer Dianne Sayer runs a yard out of Hackthorpe in Cumbria and has had a productive season, sending out 15 winners in total. So the ability to get horses winning is clearly there. Wearelongterm, though, has spent most of its career competing at Class 4 level — a solid mid-tier grade, not the bottom of the ladder — and hasn't managed a win in 11 races at that level. That doesn't mean the horse is out of place there; it just means it keeps finishing in the pack of horses good enough to run at that standard, without being the one that crosses the line first.

The name itself — Wearelongterm — feels strangely apt. Someone, somewhere, believed in this horse enough to keep running it into its ninth year. Twenty-one races in and still placing. Still turning up. The win hasn't come yet, but patience is clearly something the whole team has in abundance.