Al Shabab

The bulk of his racing has come at Class 6, the entry level of British racing, where he has won 1 from 22 races — a 5% win rate, or roughly once every 22 tries at that level. That tells you something important: even at the most accessible tier of the sport, victories have been genuinely hard to come by. His best results tend to arrive over a mile and three or four furlongs, where he has won 1 from 6 races at that trip — a win rate of around 17%, or roughly 1 in every 6, which is comfortably his strongest part of the card. When the distance suits, he is at least in the conversation.

Recent form offers a small reason for optimism. His last six results read 8-2-7-2-2-5, and stripping out the blip of that seventh place finish, there are three placed efforts in the mix — he has been getting into the frame more often than he has been winning, which at least suggests he is competitive rather than simply making up the numbers. He has not won in those six races, but he has not been disgraced in most of them either.

Richard Kingscote has ridden him in six of those outings without managing to get his head in front, though that is less a reflection on the jockey and more a statement of where Al Shabab sits in the pecking order. He is trained by David Evans, whose yard in Pandy, Monmouthshire has sent out 37 winners this season — so the trainer clearly knows how to get horses winning. The question is simply whether Al Shabab can give him one more. He raced 12 days ago and remains in active training, so another chance will come. Whether it brings another trip to the winner's enclosure is, on the evidence, genuinely uncertain.