Zambezi Diamond

Henry Candy trains her out of Kingston Warren in Oxfordshire, a yard that has sent out nine winners already this season, so the operation is clearly in decent working order. Candy is one of the more experienced and respected names in British training, which means Zambezi Diamond is at least in capable hands. The word from the yard is that she has a decent pedigree behind her, and there's genuine belief that she can become competitive — the key is finding the right race for her. She was too keen and fizzy on her debut, which is the kind of thing that can quietly derail a young horse's early career, but she appears to have settled since. She's now pointed towards restricted races that carry tighter eligibility criteria, which essentially means she'll be racing against horses with similarly modest records rather than being thrown into the deep end.

That matters more than it might sound. Plenty of horses find their level in these calmer waters and suddenly click. Zambezi Diamond raced just one day ago, so she is very much an active project, and the team clearly hasn't given up on her. Whether she can translate occasional promise — those two fourth-place finishes suggest she isn't completely out of her depth — into an actual win remains to be seen. But for now, she's a horse whose story is still being written.