Twain

His one and only win came at Leopardstown in October 2024, and by all accounts it was a smooth, confident performance. The team's representative on the day noted that jockey Mark Crehan felt the horse was doing it easily, well within himself — which is exactly what you want to hear after a debut win. There was genuine excitement about what might come next, with talk of a Guineas trial and a bright future. Then, nothing. The whole of 2025 passed without a single race, not through lack of ambition but because of a frustrating string of small physical issues that never quite cleared up. O'Brien himself called it the biggest disappointment of his last season.

Now Twain is back, and the target is the Lockinge — one of the top mile races in Britain. O'Brien describes him as a miler, quick enough not to need extra distance, though his breeding suggests he might get further if asked. That combination of speed and stamina potential is what makes a horse like this genuinely exciting at the top level. A run in the build-up is planned before the Lockinge, so the race at Saint-Cloud just eight days before that came with an asterisk attached — O'Brien was candid that it probably wasn't fair on the horse, and that he ran him primarily to give him a chance at a Group 1 that was otherwise going to pass him by. The horse finished fifth, and the jockey reported that he jumped sharply, then switched off, got to the front too soon, and was simply too green to know what to do with himself.

That greenness — that raw, unpolished quality — is actually a reason for optimism rather than concern. Twain has run twice in his life. He hasn't had the chance to grow up on a racecourse the way most horses his age have. If he learns from those experiences and arrives at the Lockinge more streetwise, this could be a very different story.