Hawaii Du Mestivel

The ground is the key factor here. On normal conditions — not too wet, not too dry — Hawaii Du Mestivel has won all three races it has contested. That is a perfect record: 3 from 3. Move it onto anything softer or firmer and that record disappears entirely. For anyone watching from the stands or following from home, that is the single most useful thing to know. When the ground is riding normally, this horse becomes a different animal.

Neil Mulholland trains it from his yard at Limpley Stoke in Wiltshire, and the operation is in fine fettle right now — 61 winners sent out already this season, which is the sort of number that tells you a yard is firing on all cylinders. Hawaii Du Mestivel tends to run in Class 4 races, which sit in the middle of the racing pyramid — solid, competitive contests without quite reaching the top tier. At that level, it has won 1 from 5 (20%), which sounds modest, but factor in the ground dependency and you can see why those numbers look the way they do. The right day, the right surface, and this horse has already shown it can deliver.

Having last raced just 15 days ago, Hawaii Du Mestivel is clearly being kept busy, and at nine years old it is not a horse anyone is nursing along carefully. The team know what they have: a horse with a sharp, specific set of conditions that suits it perfectly, and the confidence to keep rolling it out. Whether it can add to its three wins this season depends, as it so often does, on what the weather does between now and race day.