Sugar Island

A 40% win rate — two wins from five races — is genuinely exceptional at this level. Most racehorses are doing well to win one in every five or six starts, so Sugar Island winning two in five tells you she is no ordinary three-year-old. Her recent sequence of 1-9-3-5-1 looks a little uneven at first glance, but dig into it and it makes sense: a ninth at Doncaster and a fifth at Newmarket were bumpy days on the road rather than any sign of decline. Both of those are demanding tracks that can expose young horses still figuring things out, and even Aidan O'Brien's team acknowledged she was green. She came home and won at The Curragh again. That is exactly how good horses respond.

O'Brien's operation is one of the most powerful in world racing — 144 winners already this season from the Cashel yard says everything about the scale of what they do — and they clearly think highly enough of Sugar Island to have pointed her at big targets from the start. The word "Oaks or Guineas type" from a stable tour comment in late March is not throwaway language; these are the most prestigious races a three-year-old horse in Europe can run in. Her pedigree has been described as a Lily Langtry pedigree, with a family connection to Minding, herself a classic winner, which adds further weight to those ambitions.

She last raced six months ago, so there will be questions about how she returns from the break. But the fact that O'Brien's team are talking about Oaks trials and Group races over a mile — rather than easing her back in quietly — suggests they are not worried. She stays well, she handles The Curragh, and she has already shown she can win at the top level. Sugar Island is coming back with a plan, and it is an interesting one.