The other reason to take notice is who has Alpha in their care. Aidan P O'Brien's yard at Cashel in County Tipperary is one of the most powerful operations in racing, and this season that point has been made in numbers — 144 winners already. That is not a yard that wastes time with horses who are going nowhere. When a debut runner emerges from Cashel with this kind of breeding, it tends to mean something. Alpha's first race will tell us a great deal about what kind of horse we are actually looking at.