Not Me

The recent form makes for difficult reading. Looking at the last six runs in reverse order — 5th, 5th, 9th, 9th, 5th, 10th — there is no obvious upward curve here. Those mid-table finishes and double-figure placings suggest a horse that is competing without threatening, rather than one building quietly toward a breakthrough. Finishing tenth in a race tells you more about the gap to the winner than a fifth place does, and Not Me has managed both more than once recently.

At the level where Not Me mostly competes — Class 4, which sits in the lower-middle tier of British racing — it has run six times without winning once. That matters because Class 4 is not where the star horses are. These are races designed to give horses a realistic shot at winning, and Not Me has not been able to take advantage. For a five-year-old, that is a stat that raises questions about whether a win is coming at all.

The one genuine positive is the yard behind the horse. Trainer Ivan Furtado, based in Wiseton in South Yorkshire, has sent out 34 winners already this season — a healthy total that shows the team clearly knows how to get horses to win races. The puzzle is that Not Me has not yet been one of them. Whether that changes soon is the question every racing fan in the yard will be asking. The horse was out just one day ago, so whatever happens next, it will not be long in coming.