Aquifolia

The recent form makes for mixed reading. A second place finish a few races back was genuinely encouraging — it meant Aquifolia was good enough on the day to beat almost everything else in the race. But that moment of promise hasn't been built on, with runs of sixth, fourth, sixth, and seventh either side of it, and a blank dash at the most recent outing. Raced just yesterday, this is a horse very much in the thick of things right now.

Jockey Conor O'Farrell has partnered Aquifolia five times without getting a winner, which is a frustrating run for both horse and rider. At Class 5 level — the entry-level tier of British racing, where horses are competing to establish themselves rather than chase big prize money — Aquifolia has run six times and not won once. That's actually worth noting, because this is the level where you'd most expect a horse like this to find its feet. That it hasn't yet suggests there may be a specific set of conditions still waiting to unlock its best.

Trainer Neil Mulholland, based at Limpley Stoke in Wiltshire, is clearly no stranger to winning — his yard has put up 60 winners already this season, which is a healthy, productive operation by any measure. A trainer with that kind of output knows what a horse needs to perform, and the fact that Aquifolia is still running regularly suggests Mulholland believes the breakthrough could still come. Whether it does is the question every race now carries.