Notnowlinda

Those three wins have all come at Class 4 level, which sits in the middle of the racing ladder — not the very top, but genuinely competitive racing. At that level, Notnowlinda has actually been quite effective, winning 3 of 11 races (27%), or just over 1 in 4. That's a meaningful number. It suggests the horse is well placed by its trainer, Dan Skelton, who runs one of the busiest and most successful yards in Britain — sending out 194 winners already this season from his base in Alcester, Warwickshire. When a trainer of that calibre keeps running a horse, it's because it belongs.

The most familiar partnership has been with Harry Skelton — Dan's brother — who has ridden Notnowlinda in 7 of its 24 races, winning once together. That's a 14% win rate, or roughly 1 in every 7 rides, which is a shade above the horse's overall average. The Skelton combination is one of the most well-known in jump racing, and the fact they keep returning to this horse says something about the regard the team holds for it.

The honest part of the picture, though, is that Notnowlinda hasn't won in six races, and the last victory came at Hereford in March 2024 — 26 months ago now. The recent form reads 4th, 3rd, 5th, a blank run, 9th, 10th, which shows patches of promise mixed with some tough days. A third-place finish is close; a tenth is not. Still, the horse raced just one day ago, so it remains very much in active training and clearly still considered worth running. At nine years old and with a career that has produced more placed efforts than wins, Notnowlinda is exactly the kind of reliable, honest competitor that makes a busy yard tick — even if the big day hasn't quite arrived yet.