Brave Empire

The standout moment came at Lingfield Park in February 2024, when Brave Empire won a Class 2 race — one of the better races in Britain outside the very top tier. That is a significant scalp for a horse that typically competes at Class 4 level, the bread-and-butter tier of British racing. Winning 1 from 8 races at that level is a 12% return, roughly 1 in every 8 attempts, which is about what you might expect. But stepping up and beating stronger competition at Class 2 suggests there is more to this horse than its everyday record implies.

The problem is that win at Lingfield Park is now 27 months old, and the recent form makes for difficult reading. In the last six races, Brave Empire has finished 5th, 9th, 8th, 8th, 9th and 13th — a sequence that shows a horse struggling to land a blow at the moment. Racing just one day ago, it is clearly in active training and running frequently, but the results simply have not come.

Ivan Furtado, who trains the horse from a yard in Wiseton, South Yorkshire, has had a productive season with 34 winners sent out — so this is not a struggling operation. The yard clearly knows how to get horses winning. The question for Brave Empire is whether the right conditions and the right race can unlock something that has been missing for over two years. That February 2024 victory is proof the ability is there somewhere. Whether it can be found again is the puzzle Furtado's team is still trying to solve.