Blue Celestial

The recent form makes for interesting reading. A third place most recently, a second before that, then a seventh, and another third a few runs back. That's a horse finding its rhythm again after a rough patch in the middle of the sequence — the seventh is the outlier, and the two placed efforts either side of it suggest Blue Celestial is back doing what it does best: running well without quite clinching it. With the horse having raced just yesterday, it is clearly in a busy spell and its trainer is keeping it active for a reason.

That trainer is James Tate, one of the sharper operators based out of Newmarket — the small Suffolk town that is effectively the headquarters of British flat racing. Tate's yard has sent out 48 winners already this season, which is the kind of number that tells you this is a stable with horses good enough to win and a team that knows how to get them ready. When a horse sits in a yard like that and keeps finishing second and third, the expectation is that the win will come — it is more a question of when than if. Blue Celestial is three years old, still developing, and still learning. The pieces are clearly there. The finishing touch just hasn't arrived yet.