Clarissa Eclipse

What keeps the story interesting is who has her. David Simcock's Newmarket operation is having a productive season, sending out 39 winners already — that is a yard firing on all cylinders, not one that leaves horses in training without a plan. Simcock is a thoughtful trainer with a reputation for placing horses carefully and improving them over time, so the fact that Clarissa Eclipse is still in work and raced as recently as yesterday suggests the team sees something worth nurturing. She may simply be learning on the job, as three-year-olds often do.

The honest assessment right now is that she needs to find significant improvement to get competitive. But being trained by a yard in this kind of form, at one of Britain's great training centres, means she is at least in the right hands to find it.