My Mate Roger

Trained by Tom Clover out of Newmarket, one of the most competitive training centres in British racing, My Mate Roger is part of a yard that has sent out 23 winners already this season. That kind of output suggests a well-run operation with horses good enough to compete at a decent level, which makes it all the more intriguing that this particular horse keeps finishing second rather than first. The talent is clearly there. The breakthrough hasn't come.

What makes the form worth watching is the consistency. Finishing second once could be bad luck. Twice might be coincidence. Three times in a row, in every race the horse has ever run, starts to look like a pattern — and patterns in racing tend to break eventually, one way or the other. My Mate Roger raced just one day ago, so this is a horse very much in the middle of its story rather than at the end of it. Whether that next chapter involves a first win or a fourth place behind the winner is the question worth following.