Minnie Hauk

Trained by Aidan O'Brien out of his yard in Cashel, County Tipperary — a stable that has sent out 144 winners already this season, which gives you a sense of the operation — Minnie Hauk spent her three-year-old campaign picking off some of the most prestigious races in the calendar. She won the Oaks at Epsom, one of the five Classic races that define a season in Britain, then followed up with the Irish Oaks and the Yorkshire Oaks at York. That sequence — three of the biggest prizes in European racing for her age group, one after another — is the kind of form that makes people sit up. She then ran second in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, the nearest thing European flat racing has to a championship final, and those on the track that day thought she'd won. O'Brien has since reflected, with unusual candour, that in hindsight they might have stopped there and given her the winter, as she was still only three.

They didn't stop, and the results suggest she has come back better. O'Brien says she is physically stronger — noticeably wider, as he put it — and she arrived at The Curragh this week in the kind of shape that has the yard genuinely excited. Her win there on 4 May 2026 continued a streak that now stands at six in a row, all at the highest level. In her three races at Class 1, the top tier of British racing, she has won every single one. That's a perfect three from three at the level where it counts most.

The one moment that complicates an otherwise flawless picture came at Del Mar, where she never really settled, got shuffled wide, and simply over-raced. Jockey Christophe Soumillon was honest about it — she didn't take a breather when asked, which is what happens when a horse gets tense and fights the race rather than flowing through it. It reads like an off day in an unfamiliar environment rather than any kind of warning sign, especially given what has come before and after.

At 4 years old, racing just a day ago, and in the middle of a six-race winning streak at the sport's highest level, Minnie Hauk is about as compelling a horse as you'll find anywhere in training right now.