Forca Timao

That debut at Sandown was, by trainer Mark Pattinson's own admission, shockingly bad. Nobody could quite explain it. But after a break, the horse came back a different animal — and at Doncaster in June 2022, starting at 40-1 as the longest shot in the field, he won over seven furlongs in a way that surprised almost everyone except the people who had been quietly believing in him. Jockey Rossa Ryan said afterwards that the yard had always held him in real regard, and that the improvement from run one to run two had been enormous. It was the kind of win that makes racing so hard to predict: a horse most punters had written off, delivering on a day when it mattered.

Pattinson, based in Epsom, Surrey, has sent out six winners this season, and Forca Timao's most recent victory — at Southwell in April 2025 — came 13 months ago. Since then, the horse has gone six races without a win, with a fourth place as the best of it. At the level he mainly competes at — Class 4 races, the solid middle tier of British racing — he has won just 1 from 8 attempts, a win rate of around 12%, or roughly 1 in every 8. That is not unrespectable, but it does point to a horse who needs things to fall right.

What is clear is that Forca Timao has ability. Two wins from 28 races is a modest return, but horses who win at 40-1 on their second start are not ordinary. Whether he can put another winning performance together at six, after 13 months without a victory, is the question now hanging over him — and with a race just yesterday, the answer is still being written.