Empress Olivia

Her form string — 6-4-5-1-7-7 — tells a story of peaks and troughs. Reading it from left to right, those two sevens at the end are her most recent outings, and they're not pretty. But she's now returning from a break of around four months, which is worth noting. Horses often come back sharper after a rest, and trainers sometimes plan a break deliberately when a young horse needs time to mature mentally or physically. Whether that applies here, only her trainer knows — but it means this isn't a horse to write off on recent form alone.

That trainer is Mark Walford, operating out of Sheriff Hutton in North Yorkshire. His yard has sent out 36 winners this season, which shows this is a yard that knows how to get horses ready to win. When Walford decides a horse is ready to run, it's usually for a reason. At the Class 4 level where Empress Olivia has done most of her racing — essentially the bread-and-butter tier of the sport — she's won 1 from 3, or 1 in 3, which is actually a respectable ratio. It suggests she's competitive at that level when she's on her game.

The Ripon win from August remains the standout moment of her career so far. Ripon is a tight, quirky track in North Yorkshire where horses that handle the sharp bends well tend to thrive. Whether she'll return there is unknown, but it's a course to keep in mind if her name appears in the racecard. At two, the real question is simply whether she can put a consistent run together — and with a winter break behind her and a capable trainer in her corner, the next few races will tell us a lot about what she actually is.