Amantha

That said, context matters. Two-year-olds are essentially teenagers being asked to perform in public, and it is not unusual for young horses to need several races before things start to click. Finishing eleventh is not a great sign, but the fact that the yard keeps running her suggests they believe there is more to come.

That yard is Brian Ellison's operation in Norton, North Yorkshire, which has sent out 43 winners already this season — a healthy total that tells you this is not a small, struggling outfit. Ellison is an experienced trainer who knows how to place horses and when to be patient with them. If Amantha is still finding her feet, she is at least doing so somewhere that knows how to develop a young horse. Whether she can turn these early disappointments into a first win remains to be seen, but at two years old, the story is very much still being written.