Princess Child

Her wins both arrived in stakes races, the kind of competitive events that separate the truly reliable performers from the also-rans. The first came at Galway in August 2025, where she picked up the lead in the straight and held on with the kind of relentless efficiency jockey Dylan Browne McMonagle described after the race—the field in front simply ran out of petrol. That win came after she had accumulated black type (placings in top-level races) so persistently that her trainer, Joseph Patrick O'Brien, was campaigning her specifically to get her head in front at that level. A year later, almost to the day, she won again at Tipperary, a result O'Brien called a career best and a confidence booster after what had become an almost frustrating run of near-misses.

The frustration is understandable. Over her last six races, Princess Child has been placed in four of them—second, second, seventh, first, eleventh, sixth in reverse order—which paints a picture of a horse who runs well more often than she wins. She does her best work at distances between seven furlongs and a mile, where she has won 2 of 9 races (22%), nearly double her overall rate. Her partnership with regular jockey Declan McDonogh has not yet yielded a winner from seven rides together, though that speaks more to the randomness of match-ups than anything else. O'Brien's Owning Hill yard is firing on all cylinders this season with 160 winners, and the trainer has recently spoken of Princess Child running great when second behind the promising Celestial Orbit in the Express Stakes, hinting she could be competitive if they meet again.