She's Ideal

The recent form does offer some encouragement. A second-place finish is tucked in among the last six races, and the sequence of 4-2-4-4-9-9 shows a horse that was struggling badly a few runs ago but has found a better level more recently. Getting beaten into fourth is frustrating, but it is a long way from those back-of-the-field ninth-place finishes that suggest she may simply have been out of her depth on those occasions. The step forward is real, even if the winning post keeps refusing to arrive.

She's Ideal runs out of Paul W Flynn's yard in Colehill, Co Longford, a stable that has sent out 21 winners already this season — so this is not a team short on know-how or firepower. The fact that Flynn keeps running her suggests there is belief that the right opportunity is still out there. With the horse having raced just one day ago, she is clearly fit and active, and the search for that elusive first win is very much ongoing. Whether she can finally deliver it remains the question.