Silver Trumpet

The problem, according to trainer Eve Johnson Houghton, is that the handicapper moved against him. After a win at Salisbury, the weights went up 9 pounds — standard racing practice, but it clearly blunted him. Houghton's yard at Blewbury in Oxfordshire is on a strong run this season with 42 winners, so the trainer has form, but Silver Trumpet has found his level hard. He races mostly in Class 4 company, where he has won none of his 13 attempts. On normal ground conditions, though, he is genuinely effective: two wins from seven races, a win rate of nearly 30 percent. That is a real, usable strength.

Charles Bishop, his most frequent jockey, has ridden him 17 times for just one win, suggesting the partnership has not quite clicked — a 6 percent return is well below what you would hope for. Houghton has tried a wind operation, a surgical procedure sometimes used to improve breathing, and sent him to Newbury recently as part of a bid to get him competitive again. For a horse in his second half of his career with just three wins to his name, time is not infinite. He will need to rediscover his touch soon, or he risks becoming a perennial also-ran.