Sunset Boulevard

The Tramore win was a proper contest, too. Sunset Boulevard found himself in a battle at the last fence with a rival closing him down, and he dug in and held on. Patrick Mullins, who was assisting on the day, was clear that the horse toughed it out rather than coasted home, which tells you something about the mentality. A horse that wins ugly is often more interesting than one that wins easily.

Since then, his form has been mixed — finishing 8th, 5th, and 1st, followed by a fall, a pulled-up run, and a 4th — so the overall record of 1 win from 6 races (roughly 1 in every 6 outings) is modest rather than spectacular. But the team at Kings Caple aren't necessarily thinking about hurdles as the long-term destination. Venetia Williams, who has sent out 16 winners already this season, sees Sunset Boulevard as a chaser in the making. He is described as a big horse, and big horses tend to need time and distance to show their best — two things that fences over longer trips provide in abundance.

Williams took him on as a new recruit sent by owner Malcolm Denmark, and he arrives as a half-brother to Jungle Boogie, so there is some pedigree interest in the background. The plan for now is to build his experience over hurdles while his frame catches up with his potential. If the team are right about him being a chaser at heart, the current record is almost beside the point — it's a horse still finding out what it is. The Tramore win is the one result that matters, and it happened in the right way: a tough finish, on a day when it would have been easy to get beaten.