The Guinness Boys

The horse works regularly with jockey Keith Donoghue, and the pair have been out together seven times without a win between them. Recent form tells a similar story — finishes of 14th, 9th, and 7th in its last three completed races, which suggests it's moving in the right direction in terms of position, but is still a long way from troubling the judge. The dashes in the form suggest races where it either fell, was pulled up, or didn't finish, which adds another layer of frustration to the picture.

What makes this slightly puzzling is the yard behind it. Gavin Cromwell trains out of Navan in County Meath and has sent out 98 winners this season — that's a serious operation with plenty of firepower. Cromwell clearly knows how to get a horse winning, which makes The Guinness Boys something of an outlier. Sometimes a horse just takes time to find its feet, or needs exactly the right conditions to show what it can do. Whether that day is coming is the question — but with a race just yesterday, the team clearly hasn't given up looking for the answer.