Lemon Leaf

The Ffos Las win is worth paying attention to for another reason: it is the track where Lemon Leaf finally cracked it, and trainers tend to notice when a horse takes to a particular venue. Whether that becomes a pattern remains to be seen, but the yard — sorry, the team — will certainly have filed that away.

Lemon Leaf operates mainly at Class 4 level, the bread-and-butter tier of British racing, and has drawn a blank in all four races at that grade before the win. That record suggests this is a horse still finding its feet against that kind of company, making the April breakthrough feel like genuine progress rather than a fluke. The two placed efforts elsewhere show there is ability here — it just has not always translated into winning.

The trainer is Olly Murphy, whose yard at Wilmcote in Warwickshire has been in serious form this season, sending out 146 winners. That is a yard firing on all cylinders, and having a horse race just one day ago speaks to Murphy's confidence in keeping Lemon Leaf active. When a stable is running this hot, even a horse with modest career figures can find its moment — and Lemon Leaf may already have found one.