Tutti Quanti

Paul Nicholls, the trainer at Ditcheat in Somerset, has been clear that Tutti Quanti is a late bloomer. The horse is physically still developing — Nicholls describes him as "backward-type", meaning he needs time to mature — and each run has shown visible improvement. When he won at Newbury in February, it was with 12 stone (168 pounds) on his back, a weight that historically makes winning in a race of that calibre exceptionally difficult. Nicholls said afterwards that the horse had "annihilated" the field and had "now become the real horse". That language matters. It suggests Tutti Quanti is only now becoming the horse his the yard always believed he could be.

Harry Cobden, the jockey who has partnered him three times, has won exactly 30 percent of their races together — a decent win rate that rises significantly when you look at the calibre of opposition. At Newbury, where Tutti Quanti has won 2 of his 3 races, he is virtually unbeatable on the track's favourable ground. The concern, of course, is time. He has not run for eight months, which is a substantial break. Yet the trainer showed no anxiety about that gap during a stable tour, discussing the possibility of supplementing Tutti Quanti into a major race and speaking confidently about ground conditions and ratings. A horse still on an upward curve, kept fresh and ready: that is exactly the kind of setup that produces late-season surprises.