The parentage alone will turn heads among those who follow breeding. The sire, No Nay Never, has built a strong reputation for producing fast, precocious youngsters — horses that hit the ground running as two-year-olds rather than needing time to grow into themselves. The dam is by Galileo, one of the most influential stallions in the history of the sport, responsible for a string of champions. Combine early speed on one side with the class and stamina of Galileo's bloodline on the other, and you have a horse worth watching closely.
Then there is the yard. Aidan P O'Brien, based at Cashel in County Tipperary, is one of the most decorated trainers in the world, and his operation is running at a remarkable level this season — 144 winners already. To put that in context, most professional trainers would consider 20 or 30 winners a genuinely successful year. When a horse comes out of a yard firing at that rate, it does not arrive unnoticed. O'Brien's team rarely send a two-year-old to the track without believing it has the ability to perform.
There is nothing more to go on than that for now — no previous races, no times, no rivals beaten. But that is part of what makes a debut fascinating. By the end of the day, 00on Ice will have told us something about itself that no amount of breeding research could have answered in advance.