Astro King

Those two wins came in Class 2 races, which sit near the very top of British racing, and they came on fast, dry ground. That detail matters: in eight races on dry ground, Astro King has won 2, a win rate of 25% — roughly 1 in every 4. Broaden it to all conditions and the picture shifts sharply, to just 2 wins from 17 races overall, or about 1 in every 8. He is, in short, a horse that needs the sun to shine in more ways than one.

What followed the Cambridgeshire, though, has been harder to watch. Astro King has not won in his last six races, the most recent coming just yesterday, and his last victory was 32 months ago. He has raced internationally in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia — where, by trainer Daniel Kubler's own admission, the plan shifted mid-race to targeting a place rather than the win — but nothing has quite clicked. That said, Kubler is clearly not writing the horse off. A cracking second in the Earl of Sefton at Newmarket two weeks ago, one of the better middle-distance races in the calendar, suggested he still belongs at this level. Regular jockey Richard Kingscote has ridden him in 7 of his 17 races, winning once together — a rate of around 1 in 7.

The yard, which has sent out 34 winners this season alone, is now pointing Astro King toward Royal Ascot and the Wolferton, with a possible run in the Suffolk Stakes at Newmarket this Saturday as a warm-up. For a nine-year-old who has already tasted the kind of days that most racehorses never get near, that is a bold and optimistic plan — and given what he showed at Newmarket and York two summers ago, not an unreasonable one.