Precise

The numbers back up the superlatives. From just nine races, Precise has won six and placed in eight of them — a win rate of 67%, which means she has won roughly two in every three times she has lined up. That is a staggering return, and it tells you this is not a horse that is finding her level: she is operating at the very top of the sport. Both her Goodwood and Newmarket victories came at Class 1 level — the highest grade of race in Britain — and she added another top-level win at Ascot as recently as three weeks ago. When you look at her last six races, she has won four of them, with her only real blemish a seventh-place finish sandwiched between a string of victories.

What makes her dominance even more striking is where she does it. At distances between seven furlongs and a mile, Precise has run four times and won all four. She is not just good — she is perfect over the trip she seems built for. O'Brien noted that when she won the Fillies' Mile at Newmarket last autumn, her jockey was sitting almost motionless in the final furlong, coasting. She barely had to try. There was a detour to the Breeders' Cup that went nowhere after she picked up an infection, and she was then carefully managed back to fitness after another temperature in the spring. The team sent her to the Curragh for a gentle comeback before pointing her back at Newmarket for the Guineas — a Classic she reportedly only just qualified for — and she won that too.

The other detail that delights her trainer is that Precise is a homebred, meaning she was bred by the same operation that races her. O'Brien called it "next to impossible" to breed a Classic winner, which makes it all the more remarkable that this particular horse has done exactly that — and with every run, she keeps getting better.