Relentless Hero

What works in Relentless Hero's favour is the team behind it. Trained by Andrew Balding at his Kingsclere yard in Hampshire, this horse is part of one of the most productive operations in Britain right now. Two hundred and two winners in a single season is a remarkable number — that is roughly four winners every week — and it tells you that Balding knows how to get horses ready to race and ready to win. A yard firing at that volume tends to have a clear sense of which horses are improving and which are worth persevering with, so the fact that Relentless Hero has been kept busy and raced as recently as yesterday suggests the team see something worth nurturing here.

At this stage, the honest assessment is that Relentless Hero is a work in progress. Two races is a very small sample, and three-year-olds often need time to mature and find their confidence. With a top trainer's hand on the reins and some encouraging positional progress between its first and second outings, it would be premature to write this one off. The next run will tell us considerably more.