Anothermanicmonday

That said, the recent form shows some flickers worth noting. The horse finished fifth in its most recent race, run just yesterday, and also posted a fifth earlier in the sequence. In between sit some heavier finishes — eleventh, fourteenth — but at least the bookends of that six-race run suggest it is not completely out of its depth. The question is whether fifth is a ceiling or a stepping stone.

Sue Gardner trains the horse from her yard in Longdown, Devon, a small operation that has nonetheless sent out eight winners this season — a decent return that shows the yard knows how to get a horse ready to win. The frustration, then, is that Anothermanicmonday has not been one of them. At Class 4, a level where the competition is solid but not elite, the horse has had three chances and come up empty every time. Whether a drop in class, a different trip, or simply more time will unlock something better remains to be seen. For now, it is one of those horses that keeps turning up without quite delivering — and at six, the window for improvement is not wide open forever.