Jordan Electrics

Goldie, based at Uplawmoor in Lanarkshire and a man clearly in excellent form with 88 winners sent out this season, has made no secret of his ambitions for the horse. Despite being ten — an age when most racehorses are well past their peak — Goldie says Jordan Electrics simply isn't diminishing the way you'd expect. The targets are the Ayr Gold Cup and possibly the Portland, two of the most competitive sprint races in Britain. He acknowledges that landing both is rare, usually it's one or the other, but the aspiration tells you everything about how highly the yard regards him.

On fast, dry ground the horse is a different animal altogether — 6 wins from 17 races on those conditions, winning 35% of the time, compared to a far more modest record when the ground turns soft. Paul Mulrennan, his most regular partner, has ridden him to 7 of those 11 wins from just 16 rides together, a quite astonishing win rate of 44% — nearly half of every race they've contested, they've won. Goldie also noted that the horse was once notoriously difficult to travel, but has mellowed considerably with age, which at his level makes a genuine practical difference.

He hasn't won in his last six races, and an injury has kept him away from the track for much of the past 22 months since that last Hamilton victory. Goldie is clear it isn't career-ending, just time-consuming. Given that this horse has already defied the conventional wisdom about ageing, and given what he has consistently done when fresh and on a fast Hamilton straight, it would be unwise to write him off.