Patagonia Girl

She's only four years old and trained by Hugo Palmer out of Malpas in Cheshire — conveniently close to Chester — and Palmer has been in outstanding form this season, sending out 66 winners. He spoke last autumn about Patagonia Girl being a horse with genuine room to grow, physically and competitively, and described her as a fast-ground specialist with real scope for improvement. That assessment looks sharp in hindsight. Her recent run of form reads: win, win, third, eleventh, second, win — six races that show a horse coming into her own, with only one really flat performance in the mix.

She got off the mark at Salisbury in June last year and has been steadily building since. Most of her races have come at Class 4 level — solid, competitive racing without quite being the top tier — and she's won 1 from 3 at that level, a 33% record that is decent without being spectacular. But the Chester numbers suggest she might be capable of stepping up. Palmer hinted last autumn at ambitions involving the Cheshire Oaks, one of the feature races at Chester's famous May Festival, which would represent a significant jump in class for a horse currently operating below the elite level. Given that she's young, improving, and already thriving at the track where that race is run, the interest in her trajectory makes complete sense.