Queen Of The Pride could be the latest rising star to win Thursday’s Group One Yorkshire Oaks (2,381m) on day two of York’s spectacular Ebor meeting on the big galloping Knavesmire track.

The four-year-old’s trainer John Gosden (now in partnership with his son Thady) is looking to win the Yorkshire Oaks for a fifth time and both of Queen Of The Pride’s parents were Group One winners.

Considering the huge improvement she has made since stepping up to similar distances as this, it is surely just a matter of time before she also grabs that accolade.

It could very possibly happen on this first venture into the most elite company, especially considering the way she quickened past rivals to win last month’s Group Two Lancashire Oaks (2,400m) at Haydock.

If team Gosden don’t win it with the Oisin Murphy-ridden galloper, they could bag first prize with the five-year-old mare Emily Upjohn, a racehorse with a very different profile.

A winner of her only start at York – the Group Three Musidora Stakes back in 2022 – she is dual Group One winner after most recently saluting at the elite level with a thrilling last-to-first victory in Epsom’s Coronation Cup in June 2023.

However, in sharp contrast to upwardly mobile Queen Of The Pride, Emily Upjohn is struggling to rediscover her former splendour.

Thursday’s rider Kieran Shoemark was blamed in some quarters for keeping her too far back over the shorter trip of this month’s Group One Nassau Stakes (2,000m) at Goodwood but the Gosden’s did not join in on that criticism, accepting instead that the real Emily Upjohn just didn’t turn up that day.

Serious rivals to this Newmarket-trained pair include You Got To Me and Content, first and second in last month’s Group One Irish Oaks (2,400m).

Three-year-olds have won the Yorkshire Oaks in eight of the past 10 years, with five of those handled by Content’s trainer Aidan O’Brien.

A less obvious candidate perhaps, but an interesting one surely, is William Buick’s mount Mistral Star.

She is a former handicapper but the manner in which she accelerated past rivals in the Listed Aphrodite Fillies’ Stakes (2,400m) over this trip and on fast ground at Newmarket last month strongly suggests that this improver deserves her place in this historic event.