Blindfold Games

Most of Blindfold Games' races have come at Class 6, which is the entry-level tier of British racing — the kind of races where you'd expect a horse to be competitive if it has any talent at all. Four races at that level, zero wins, is a stat that raises questions. It doesn't mean the horse is hopeless; plenty of horses take time to find their moment. But it does mean the clock is ticking on proving there's a win in there somewhere.

Billy Loughnane has been the jockey for five of those eight races, and the pair have yet to find the winner's enclosure together. Loughnane is a young rider who has been making a genuine name for himself in British racing, so it isn't a case of the horse being let down by an inexperienced pilot — the partnership simply hasn't clicked into a winning combination yet. George Boughey, the Newmarket trainer responsible for the horse's preparation, has had 99 winners this season, which tells you he knows how to get a horse to the track in winning form. That makes Blindfold Games something of an outlier in what is clearly a well-functioning yard. With a race just one day ago, this is a horse very much in the thick of its campaign — and somewhere in that recent form, the glimpse of a second place suggests a breakthrough might not be as far away as the record implies.