Hawkseye View

The cold truth is that Hawkseye View is not easy to win with. Joint-trainer Joel Parkinson has said as much himself, pointing to a horse that is highly particular about the ground underfoot — he needs conditions to be dry and normal to show his best. Get that wrong and you are wasting your time. Get it right, as Newcastle finally proved, and he can be "clever" over a fence, as Parkinson put it. The problem is that racing does not always serve up the right conditions on the right day, and with 1 win from 22 races — roughly 1 in every 22 outings — there have been plenty of days when everything just has not clicked.

There is still something to admire here. Eight placed finishes from those 22 races means he has been competitive far more often than his win record implies. He has bumped into some decent horses along the way, which softens the story a little. His most recent run shows a fourth, and before that a win, a blank, and then a first — so there are signs of form returning at the right time of year.

Regular jockey Peter Kavanagh has had seven chances in the saddle without a win, though it is worth noting that their sole victory together has not yet arrived — Kavanagh's seven rides all came before Newcastle, where someone else may have been in the irons. The yard itself, run jointly by Parkinson and Sue Smith out of High Eldwick in West Yorkshire, is in strong form overall with 42 winners this season, so the team around this horse knows what it is doing. Hawkseye View is simply a puzzle that took a long time to solve.

At Class 5 level — the bread and butter of British racing — he has won 1 from 10 at that grade, or 10% of his races there. He raced just yesterday, which tells you he is in the thick of things right now. Whether the ground cooperates again is the question. When it does, he has shown he can deliver.