Man Oh Man

The recent form makes for difficult reading. Looking at the last six races, the best result was a second place, sandwiched between a fifth and a seventh, with a couple of blanks thrown in for good measure. There's no obvious upward trend here — this is a horse that occasionally finds a gear, but can't yet sustain it when it matters most. Jockey Bryan Carver has been the man in the saddle for six of those races and the pair are yet to trouble the scorer together, going winless across all six shared outings.

Man Oh Man typically lines up in Class 5 races — the entry-level tier of British racing, where the competition is the least fierce and the fields are made up of horses in a similar boat. Even there, four races have produced no wins. That's a significant detail: this isn't a horse being thrown in at the deep end and struggling. It's racing at the level designed for horses like it, and still coming up short.

Trainer D Summersby operates a small yard out in St. Giles-on-the-Heath in Devon, and to be fair to the team, they've sent out three winners this season — so they know how to get a horse to the front. Man Oh Man just hasn't been one of them yet. The horse raced as recently as yesterday, so the yard are clearly still trying, still entering, still believing something might click. At seven years old, with 13 races behind it and none of them resulting in a win, that belief alone deserves a small round of applause. Whether the horse eventually rewards it is another question entirely.