Favoured can be pictured as being on the receiving end of someone leaning your way. Several things stand side by side, and attention tips toward one of them. Sometimes a person does the leaning, and the chosen one gets easier shifts or better terms. Sometimes a whole crowd leans, and the same place or method keeps getting picked. Sometimes it is only expectation that leans, and everyone assumes one runner will win. And sometimes nobody is leaning at all — the sun, the soil, or plain luck has simply been kind to one hillside. In every case the word describes the one being leaned toward, never the one doing the leaning.