Minhad

What makes the Newmarket win so striking is the context. Newmarket is regarded as one of the most prestigious tracks in the country, and a Class 2 there is serious company — these are not soft touches. For Minhad, it was also a first career win, which makes it all the more unusual. Horses don't typically announce themselves at the highest level having never won before; Minhad managed exactly that.

The key to understanding this horse is distance. Over 1 mile 6 furlongs to 2 miles — the longer end of the spectrum — Minhad has won 2 of its 4 races, a 50% record that is genuinely eye-catching. At shorter trips or in lower-grade races, it hasn't converted once. What that tells you is that Minhad is a horse that needs a real test: it wants to be running on, grinding opponents down over a long distance, rather than scrapping for position in a sprint-finish. Put it in the right race at the right distance, and it looks like a different animal entirely.

The horse is trained by Ismail Mohammed at a Newmarket yard that has sent out 14 winners already this season, so there's clearly a capable operation behind it. With its most recent run coming just a day ago and two wins now on the board, Minhad heads into whatever comes next in the best form of its career — and on the evidence of those two wins, it's a horse worth keeping an eye on when the race is over a proper distance.