Ghost Dancing

What gives the picture some colour is who is doing the training. Alan King's yard at Wroughton in Wiltshire has sent out 58 winners already this season — that is a serious operation, the kind of stable that knows how to place a horse and when to be patient. When a trainer of that calibre keeps running a horse that hasn't won yet, it usually means they see something worth nurturing. Ghost Dancing raced just yesterday, so this is very much a horse in active campaigning rather than one being quietly shelved.

The form figures — 4, a gap, 3, 4 — tell the story of a horse that tends to finish in the second half of the field but occasionally edges closer to the front. That third place is the highlight, a moment where everything clicked a little better. Whether Ghost Dancing can build on that and convert some of this experience into a first victory is the question its team will be asking heading into whatever comes next.