Resalah

The recent form makes for sobering reading. Over the last six races, the best finish has been seventh, and those results read 10th, 7th, 7th, 7th, 12th, and 7th coming back from most recent. Finishing seventh or worse, repeatedly, suggests Resalah is currently struggling to find a race where the pieces fall into place. That said, the horse raced just a day ago, so the yard are clearly persisting and looking for a breakthrough.

Nikki Evans trains Resalah from a small yard in Pandy, Monmouthshire — a part of Wales not typically associated with big racing operations. Evans has sent out two winners from the yard this season, which shows the team is capable of getting horses to the winner's enclosure. The challenge now is finding the right opportunity for this particular horse. At Class 6 — the lowest level of British racing, where the competition is deliberately designed to give horses like this a chance — Resalah has run four times without success. That is the level where you would most expect a win to come, which makes the blank record there the most telling detail of all.

At three years old, there is still time. Some horses simply take longer to find their feet, and trainers with smaller yards will often patiently work through the options. But Resalah will need to show something soon to suggest that a first win is genuinely within reach rather than just around the next corner.