Wodhooh

The numbers are almost absurd for a six-year-old. Ten wins and 13 places from just 16 races gives her a win rate of 62 percent — roughly winning 10 in every 16 races she enters. To put that in context, most good horses at the top level win somewhere between 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 races. Wodhooh is in a completely different bracket. Her recent form reads 3-1-1-1-2-1, meaning in her last six outings she has won four and finished second once — a sequence that would make most trainers blush with pride. She raced just yesterday and is very much in the thick of it.

The headline moments are stacked up like trophies. A Class 1 win at Newbury in December 2023. A Class 1 at Doncaster the following January. Two Class 2 wins at Cheltenham, and then a Class 1 at Ascot. Class 1 races are the very top tier of British racing — the equivalent of playing Champions League football, not a local cup — and she has won three of them. Seven weeks ago she won at Cheltenham again, her third win at that track from three visits. A horse that wins every time it goes to one of the most demanding, punishing racecourses in the world is not lucky. It is exceptional.

Elliott, speaking after that Cheltenham win, admitted it is genuinely hard to know just how good she is precisely because she hides so much at home. He described jockey Jack Kennedy giving her "a peach of a ride," and noted that she idled slightly in the straight — briefly looking like she might be beaten — before picking up again with something that felt almost effortless. Kennedy, for what it is worth, has ridden her five times and won all five. That kind of partnership, a perfect five from five, does not happen by accident.

With the Mares' Hurdle at Cheltenham firmly in Elliott's sights, Wodhooh is about to step onto the biggest stage of all — and on everything shown so far, she belongs there completely.