Game Point

The recent form tells a familiar story. Working backwards through the last six runs: a third, a sixth, a tenth, a fourth, a sixth, and a second. There is a horse in there that can genuinely threaten — that second place and that third place show it — but there is also a horse that goes missing, as that tenth suggests. The consistency isn't there yet, and until it is, the win column is going to stay empty.

Colin Keane, one of Ireland's most accomplished jockeys, has partnered Game Point eight times without a winner between them. That is a long association to have produced nothing, and it raises an honest question: is this a horse that needs a different approach, or simply a horse that has not yet found the right race? Eight attempts is a meaningful sample. The answer probably isn't the jockey.

The trainer is R P Cody, based at Dunnamaggin in County Kilkenny — a yard that has sent out six winners already this season, so it is not as though the stable is short of ideas. Game Point raced just one day ago, which means it is being kept busy and the team clearly believes there is a performance in there worth chasing. Sometimes that persistence pays off. Sometimes a horse just needs the penny to drop.

For now, Game Point sits in an awkward space: talented enough to place, not yet good enough — or perhaps not yet lucky enough — to win. A horse with six places from eleven races is not without ability. It simply hasn't found a way to turn that ability into a victory, and at four years old, the window for that to happen is still open, if not quite as wide as it once was.