Korker

His best spell came in the autumn of 2023, when he won back-to-back Class 2 races at Beverley and then Windsor within the space of a month. Jockey Clifford Lee's comments after Windsor paint a vivid picture of a horse who had finally grown up — relaxed at the start, picking off rivals one by one, finishing so well that he ran Emaraaty Ana, a horse rated 111, to a short margin at Ascot shortly before. Lee described him as having "grown up now" and spoken of a confidence booster well earned. His first win had come at Haydock Park in September 2021, and it is Lee who has been most associated with him throughout — together they have won 4 from 21 races, a win rate of 19%, or almost 1 in every 5. That is a noticeably better return than Korker achieves with anyone else.

He has not won in 31 months, and his last six runs show him drifting out of contention — finishing tenth, eighth, thirteenth, thirteenth before a second and a third gave a brief flicker of renewed form. Trainer Karl Burke, whose yard at Coverham has sent out 140 winners this season alone, has acknowledged that Korker came back a little tight from his latest run at Hamilton but is targeting the Wokingham — a big, competitive sprint at Royal Ascot. Burke is sticking with jockey Jack Nicholls, who he says gets a good tune out of a horse that can be slowly away. Whether Korker has one more big day in him is genuinely open. The form says not yet. The trainer clearly thinks otherwise.