Benny The Duke

What keeps things mildly interesting is that he is clearly still active and still being pointed at races by trainer Brendan Oliver Walsh, whose yard has sent out two winners so far this season. Walsh is not a trainer flooding the record books with numbers, so the fact that he keeps running Benny The Duke suggests there is still some belief that the right opportunity might come along. Whether that optimism is well-founded is another matter — a horse who last won nearly four years ago and has been finishing in the bottom half of fields throughout his recent races is asking his the yard to be patient in a way that tests most people's faith.

At nine years old, Benny The Duke is not a young horse with time on his side. He has three placed finishes to his name alongside that solitary win, so he has occasionally been competitive without quite getting over the line. But the current run of form offers little encouragement, and Ballinrobe — the scene of his one moment of glory — has not produced a repeat. For casual observers, he is the kind of horse that most racing yards have at least one of: likeable, durable, and persistently almost-but-not-quite.