Parading

Trained by Richard Hughes at Upper Lambourn in Berkshire, Parading is part of a yard operating in serious form right now. Sixty winners in a single season is a genuinely impressive tally — that is the kind of output that marks out a stable doing most things right, from how they prepare horses to the races they choose to enter them in. Hughes, a former champion jockey who rode at the very top level, now brings that experience to the training side, and his string at Upper Lambourn has become one to follow. When a horse like Parading runs from this yard, it tends to be ready.

Zero wins from three races sounds modest, and it is — but Parading only raced for the first time this year as a two-year-old, which means the whole journey is just beginning. At this stage, improvement from race to race matters more than the winning column. The direction of travel here — from 10th to 5th to 2nd — is exactly what you want to see.