On The Bubble

The trouble is that On The Bubble hasn't won in 27 months. Its recent form makes grim reading—8th, 7th, 4th, 10th, 2nd, 5th across the last six races—and there is a stubborn consistency to its failure. The horse has raced 23 times at Class 6 level (the lowest competitive grade) and managed just 1 win from those starts. It prefers longer distances beyond 2 miles, where it has won 1 of 4 races, but that preference hasn't translated into a winning habit at any track or in any conditions other than the wet. Greg Fairley, who rides On The Bubble most often, has yet to ride it to victory: 0 wins from 9 races together.

That recent second-place finish is the only encouraging sign in an otherwise flat spell. The horse is active—it raced just a day ago—and Rutherford's yard has found a way to send out 7 winners this season, so there is clearly some understanding of how to get horses competitive. For On The Bubble, that seems to mean waiting for the rain and hoping for a distance race where the horse's stamina might matter more than raw speed. On current form, that is a lot of hoping.