Ashnak

David O'Meara, who trains out of Upper Helmsley in North Yorkshire and has sent out an impressive 101 winners already this season, believes there's a straightforward explanation for the inconsistency. Speaking recently, O'Meara noted that Ashnak ran well on his first start for the yard in the Zabeel Mile but has struggled to reproduce that form since. The key insight came from jockey Rab Havlin, who rode him at York and told O'Meara something that reframes those disappointing runs entirely: Ashnak needs room to race. If he gets boxed in, crowded, or denied his own rhythm, he simply switches off and gives you a completely different kind of performance. That eighth-place finish suddenly looks less like a bad horse and more like a frustrated one.

The plan, then, is to be smarter about where and how he runs. O'Meara is considering putting Havlin back in the saddle — a jockey who already understands the horse's quirks — and targeting smaller fields where Ashnak has more room to breathe and settle into his own stride. It's a logical approach. Some horses are straightforward; others need the racing to set up just right before they show you what they're really capable of. Ashnak, it seems, falls firmly into the second category.

He raced just yesterday, so O'