Loyal Touch

The most striking detail in Loyal Touch's record is what happens when the trip stretches to seven furlongs up to a mile. At that range, the horse has won 1 from 4 — that's one in every four races, a 25% win rate that comfortably outstrips the overall career figure of roughly 1 win in every 8. For a horse that has run 40 times, finding a distance that suits this reliably is genuinely useful information. Archie Young has also shown a knack for getting the best out of this horse — the pair have won 2 from 8 races together, which works out at 1 in every 4 rides, well above the career average.

The one cloud on the horizon is Class 2 company. Loyal Touch has run 13 times at that level — among the top races in Britain — and has yet to win once. That's a blank from 13 attempts, which suggests the horse is competitive enough to be entered at that standard but has found the very best opponents a step too far. The wins have come elsewhere, including at Carlisle in August 2022 and most recently at Pontefract in September 2024.

That Pontefract win was now 20 months ago, and recent form makes for sober reading: the last six runs have produced two fourth-place finishes and three finishes in the bottom half of the field, with one run unplaced. The horse is still active — it raced just yesterday — so this is very much a live story. But Loyal Touch will need to find something it has been missing for the best part of two years if it is going to add a sixth win to its tally. Given what we know about the distances and the jockey partnership that bring out the best in this horse, those are the conditions worth watching for.