Ron's Angel

The recent form tells an interesting story. Reading it from oldest to most recent — a win, then two seconds sandwiching a fourth — suggests a horse that bounced back well after its one below-par effort. A fourth place is hardly a disaster for a two-year-old still figuring things out, and the return to placing immediately afterwards is exactly the kind of resilience that trainers look for early in a career.

Ron's Angel is trained by John Butler out of Newmarket, which is the heartland of British flat racing — a town built around horses, where the competition for stable spots is fierce and standards are high. Butler's yard has been in excellent form this season, sending out 39 winners, so this is not a horse sitting quietly on the sidelines. With a race just yesterday, Ron's Angel is very much in the thick of things, and a trainer firing at that rate tends to run horses when he thinks they have a genuine chance.