Shaffron

Menuisier trains out of Pulborough in West Sussex and has had a productive season, sending out 20 winners — a healthy total that shows this is a yard capable of getting horses to perform. That makes Shaffron something of an outlier in the stable at the moment. It has raced four times at Class 5 level, which is the entry-level tier of British racing, and has yet to win any of them. For context, Class 5 is where horses tend to race when they are finding their feet or competing at a modest level, so a record of zero wins from four attempts there is a challenge the team will be keen to resolve.

Recent form makes for fairly sobering reading: a third-place finish is the only bright spot across the last six races, with a string of mid-field and tail-end finishes either side of it. Raced just yesterday, Shaffron is clearly an active project rather than a horse being nursed along, and the fact that Menuisier keeps running it suggests there is belief that the right opportunity is still out there. Sometimes it just takes one race — the right distance, the right conditions, the right day — for everything to click. Shaffron is still searching for that moment.