Jetaway Nana

The recent run of form is harder to ignore. The last six races have produced nothing better than a third-place finish, and the sequence of 7th, 13th, 4th, 15th, 3rd reads like a horse that finds a level and then falls away from it. That 13th is particularly eyebrow-raising — races like that tend to suggest either a bad day or a race that simply came too soon. Jetaway Nana last raced just one day ago, so Cian Collins and his yard in Navan are clearly happy to keep the horse busy.

Collins has had a productive season, with 20 winners sent out from the Navan base, which marks him as a trainer worth following. Eoin Staples, who partners Jetaway Nana most regularly, has won once from their five races together — that works out at 1 in 5, or 20%, which is actually a respectable number between a jockey and a specific horse. The trouble is that the one win they share is also the one win the horse has ever had, so the partnership has essentially produced everything Jetaway Nana has to show for its career so far.

Wexford, then, holds a special place in this horse's story — the only track where it has stood in the winner's enclosure. Whether that will happen again is genuinely open. At six years old, Jetaway Nana is no youngster still finding its feet, but horses can surprise you. For now, it is a horse that runs regularly, places often enough to earn its keep, and is presumably waiting for conditions to click just right — as they apparently did, once, on a late August afternoon in the southeast of Ireland.