Top Gun Tina

The numbers are honest about where she sits in the pecking order. A 3% win rate — roughly one win every 33 races — tells you this is a horse competing at the bottom level of British racing, Class 6, where the fields are made up of horses who rarely win anywhere. Even there, she has taken just 1 from 26 attempts at that level, which is a 4% return. She places reasonably often, with six placed efforts to her name, meaning she is not disgracing herself — she just rarely gets her nose in front.

Where she does show a flicker of something better is over distances between seven furlongs and a mile. At those trips, she has won 1 from 7 races — 14%, or roughly one in seven — which is a markedly better return than her overall record suggests. That is the kind of stat a trainer notices. It means the team at David Thompson's yard in Bolam, County Durham, have a specific window in which she gives herself a genuine chance, and finding the right race at the right distance is the puzzle they keep trying to solve. Thompson's yard has sent out nine winners this season, so there is clearly ability in the set-up to place horses well.

Her recent form reads 4-4-6-5-8-5 in reverse — a string of mid-field finishes that suggest she is ticking over without threatening. She has not won since that Carlisle breakthrough ten months ago, and jockey Sean Kirrane, who has partnered her seven times, is still waiting for his first win aboard her. She raced just yesterday, which means the team are keeping her busy and believing another moment might be around the corner. Whether lightning strikes twice at Carlisle remains to be seen, but for those who have followed her long enough, they know it can happen.