Erzindjan

He seems to run his best races over a mile and a furlong to a mile and two furlongs, where he has won 1 of 14 races — still a modest 7 percent, but it's where he has shown his greatest aptitude. More tellingly, his recent form offers little encouragement. In his last six races he has finished twelfth, sixth, first, eighth, fifth, and fourth. That solitary win in the sequence stands out like a flare in the dark, but the races before and after it suggest it may have been an outlier rather than the start of something.

Ray Dawson has ridden him for 13 of those 24 races, winning once together — a relationship that mirrors the horse's overall ceiling. He is trained by T J Kent at Newmarket, a yard that has sent out 12 winners this season and clearly knows the craft, but Erzindjan has never won in four attempts at Class 2 level, the tougher races where top trainers prove themselves. Still active and last raced just a day ago, Erzindjan remains a horse worth keeping tabs on if the yard fancy another tilt, but the facts suggest his racing future is unlikely to produce many headlines.