Sabrina J Harty

The most notable thread running through her early career is a long-standing partnership with Supreme Law, a horse she has saddled for eight races together without managing to find the winner's enclosure. Eight runs is a meaningful sample — enough to tell you that the result hasn't come, though not enough to say it never will. For a small operation still finding its feet, keeping faith with the same horse over that many races suggests genuine belief that a breakthrough is possible.

The numbers are thin, and there is no point pretending otherwise. But every trainer who now fills a yard full of winners once had a record that looked exactly like this one.