Calendar Girl

What makes her form even more interesting is the quality of opposition she has faced. In October, she won a Class 1 race at Newmarket, one of the top races in Britain and the kind of test that sorts out the truly talented from the merely good. A month earlier, she had already won a Class 2 race at Doncaster, and in August she landed a win at Haydock Park. These are not routine victories — they represent genuine peak-level racing. Yet her recent form tells a different story. In her last six races, most recent first, she has run fourth, sixth, first, first, first, and second. That is three wins in the last six outings, but the sixth-place finish and the fourth most recently suggest she may have hit a dip in form.

She races for Owen Burrows' yard at Lambourn, which has been in fine fettle this season with 32 winners already sent out. Raced just a day ago, Calendar Girl is still very much an active competitor at three years old, still in that phase where improvement and development are possible. The gap of eight weeks since her last win at Haydock in August is notable — it suggests the yard may have been giving her time to recover or find her feet again after that purple patch. Whether she can return to the form that saw her beat top-class fields in the autumn remains the question that will define the rest of her season.