Zafaan

The horse has clear preferences. On normal ground conditions he is substantially better than anywhere else—winning 3 of his 12 races on such conditions, a 25% win rate that stands out against his overall 15%. He also performs consistently well at distances between 1m3f and 1m4f, winning 2 of 9 races at that trip, and he has genuine course form at Great Yarmouth, where he has won 2 of his 5 races there. These are the kind of patterns that a trainer learns to exploit, and Clover appears to be doing exactly that—running the horse where he has the best chance of winning. The one anomaly is jockey Harry Bannister, with whom Zafaan has yet to register a win from five rides, a puzzling disconnect that has somehow not derailed the horse's recent success.

What makes Zafaan interesting now is the momentum. He is a horse that typically competes at Class 6 level—the lower rungs of racing—but he is winning regularly enough to suggest his the yard have calibrated his campaign correctly. After an early win at Doncaster in May 2023, he has taken time to get back on the scoresheet with real consistency, but those two wins in the last fortnight tell you he remains sharp and still has races to win. For a modest handicapper, that kind of form is precisely what matters.