New Zealand

That one win came at The Curragh last July, and it wasn't just any win. He beat a horse called Isaac Newton on the day, which gives you an immediate sense that this isn't a horse who's been finding easy targets. More tellingly, since that success he has been pitched into Group 1 company — the very top tier of European racing — and wasn't disgraced, finishing within touching distance of a horse named Puerto Rico at Saint-Cloud. Finishing fourth in that kind of race, against the best horses in Europe, is a result that deserves to be read as a serious statement of intent rather than a near miss.

He is trained by Aidan P O'Brien at Cashel in County Tipperary, one of the most formidable racing operations in the world. The yard has sent out 144 winners already this season, which is a number that sounds almost absurd when you say it out loud. That level of output means O'Brien is unusually good at placing horses in the right races at the right time, and the fact that this horse has been pointed at top-level races as a three-year-old tells you exactly how highly he is regarded. O'Brien himself has spoken about the horse's ability to stay well over longer distances, and the plan is to send him into a Derby trial — a stepping stone race designed to test whether a horse is ready for the famous mile-and-a-half Classic. Given that New Zealand is described as a genuine stayer in the making, that ambition feels entirely reasonable. Some horses are sprinters by nature; this one sounds like a miler who is only just getting started, with the ground and distance questions still to be fully answered on the biggest days of the year.