Melissa Honey

Both wins have come in quick succession this summer. The first arrived at Doncaster in early June, and just last week Melissa Honey followed up at Leicester, making it 2 wins from the last 6 races. For context, across the first 11 races of the career there was nothing. Zero wins. Whatever clicked in June, it's stayed clicked.

The conditions matter here. On fast, dry ground, Melissa Honey has won 2 of 5 races — a 40% win rate, which is genuinely exceptional. That's winning nearly 2 in every 5 times the ground is in its favour, compared to nothing on softer surfaces. At sprint distances — anywhere from 5 furlongs up to six and a half — it has gone 2 wins from 9 races (22%), or roughly 1 in every 4 to 5 attempts. That's where the horse wants to be: quick ground, short and sharp.

Here's the one oddity worth noting. Melissa Honey has typically been running in Class 5 races — the bread-and-butter end of the schedule — and has won zero of seven at that level. Both wins have come elsewhere. That's a strange quirk, and it suggests the horse may actually be a touch inconsistent when asked to do things on its own terms, but capable of raising its game when something changes.

Michael Herrington, training out of a small yard in Willoughton, Lincolnshire, has sent out 33 winners already this season — a yard punching with real confidence right now. When a trainer is in that kind of rhythm, the horses around them tend to run well. Melissa Honey is the latest proof of that. Two wins in the last month, racing again just yesterday — this is a horse very much in the middle of something worth watching.