Owns the best raw speed figures in the field and his recent clockings — 27.55 last week, 27.58 at his best — sit right with the leaders. Four of his last six runs rated 43 or better. So why sixth last time? The answer is in his record: no wins from nine course and distance starts, three places, and a patient running style that keeps finding traffic at the first bend. Trap two wins just 16.7% at this grade. The figures say he is overdue; the pattern says the figures flatter him. Somewhere between the two lies another honourable placing.

Gets the golden trap one box — 22.9% at this grade, the best on the track — and has won two of his nine course and distance starts, with 62 and 63-rated runs in his last six. The problem is everything between those peaks: an 18 and a 31 sit alongside them, his latest run was a 40-rated fourth, and he is a patient runner who needs gaps on the rail rather than a dog who seizes the draw advantage at the boxes. When his good version loads he is competitive with anything here; his bad version finishes down the field. The box improves his odds; it cannot pick which dog arrives.

The sharpest break in the race and the second-best bend rating — weapons that would make her the pick if this were a sprint. It is not, and that is her problem: all her recent racing has been over 238 metres at D-grades, her two attempts at this trip produced nothing, and her ratings at the sprint have sat in the 20s for two months. Her early speed will have her prominent, possibly in front, for the first two bends. Whether there is anything left over the last two is the question her record answers pessimistically. A better early-race spectacle than a betting proposition.

Ten course and distance starts without a win or a place tells its own story, and the supporting evidence is no kinder: the slowest speed figures in the field by a wide margin, a best time nearly three lengths behind the pick's, and ratings that have topped 46 just once all summer. Trap six is a decent box at this grade at 20.3% and he is at least consistent, rarely running below a 32. But consistency at the wrong level is just reliable defeat. Impossible to recommend.