Mr Lincoln

His best chance of turning that around appears to come when the race is run over a mile and a furlong to a mile and two furlongs. At those distances, he has won 1 from 4 races — a 25% win rate, which is a completely different animal to his overall record. That is not a coincidence worth brushing past. When the trip suits, Mr Lincoln clearly goes up a gear, which means keeping an eye on the race distance before writing him off entirely.

Gary Carroll rides him most often, partnering Mr Lincoln in 7 of his 19 races and landing that sole win between them. That gives them a shared win rate of 14%, or roughly 1 in every 7 times they team up — not spectacular, but notably better than the overall picture suggests. The horse is trained by Iain Jardine, whose yard in Carrutherstown has sent out 57 winners already this season. That is a yard in decent form, which at least means Mr Lincoln is not sitting in a quiet or struggling operation.

He typically competes a level below the top races, and at that grade he has drawn a blank from 3 attempts — 0 from 3, which is not encouraging. Raced just yesterday and still active, Mr Lincoln is clearly being kept busy. Whether another win is coming is harder to say. The honest version is that he is a horse who won once, a long time ago, at a distance that suited him, and has not been able to repeat it since. Fans of a long shot — and there are always a few — will point to that distance record. Everyone else will be waiting to be convinced.