Paint Your Palette

That said, context matters. Paint Your Palette only raced yesterday, so there is plenty of season left, and at three years old this horse is still learning the job. Some horses take time to find their feet, and three races is a very small sample from which to draw firm conclusions.

The one genuinely encouraging factor here is who is doing the training. Jamie Osborne's yard at Upper Lambourn has sent out 48 winners already this season — that is a busy, productive operation run by someone who clearly knows how to get horses ready to perform. Osborne is not a trainer who wastes time on horses that have no ability whatsoever, so the fact that Paint Your Palette is still in training and racing is at least a reason not to write this one off entirely. Whether the talent is there waiting to emerge is the open question.