Felicitas

Ed Walker, who trains from Upper Lambourn in Berkshire and has sent 76 winners out this season alone, has always believed in this horse. After her winning debut at Lingfield, she was already thinking big — not about staying at one and a half miles, but about whether she would even get that far. Walker's eye has turned toward trials for the Oaks, one of the most prestigious races in the calendar, though he is equally convinced she may prove too sharp, too fast, for the longer distances those races demand. Jockey Kieran Shoemark, who rode her at York, echoed that sense: just three starts in and already they are mapping out campaigns at Chantilly and wondering about the Prix de Diane, the French equivalent of the Oaks. She too felt confident she would not want to be stretched beyond a mile and a quarter.

What makes Felicitas genuinely exciting is not just that she wins — it is that she does so against horses with solid reputations, in races her trainer chose carefully rather than reached for in hope. At four months between her last win and now, she remains currently active. The arc of a three-year-old filly can shift quickly, but so far Felicitas has done everything right: winning where it matters, showing the kind of physical development Walker likes to see, and running the sort of race at Sandown that made a cautious trainer throw away his doubts and stick to his guns.