Korker

Three of Korker's four victories have come in top-level races — the sort of races that sit among the best in Britain — and two of them arrived in the space of just four weeks in the autumn of 2023. After Clifford Lee rode him to win at Beverley in late September, he described a horse that had genuinely grown up. At Windsor the following month, Lee was effusive: Korker jumped cleanly from the gates, stayed relaxed throughout, picked off his rivals one by one, and finished the season having run a horse rated 111 to a near thing at Ascot. "He's grown up now," Lee said. That Windsor win was the last time Korker has seen the winner's enclosure — 33 months ago now.

Since then, the form has gone quiet. His last six races read 13-13-8-10-6-4, which tells the story of a horse gradually working its way back toward relevance without quite getting there. The most recent run was just yesterday, so he is very much still at it. Burke's yard is in rude health — 145 winners already this season — and the trainer has been thinking carefully about where Korker fits. After a slightly stiff run at Hamilton, Burke has his eye on the Wokingham, one of the big sprint races of the summer. He also mentioned Jack Nicholls, who has been getting a good tune out of the horse, as the man to ride him there. It is, as Burke put it, a good opportunity for a young jockey in a race like that.

Korker has the form in his book to suggest he belongs at this level. The question is whether, at seven, with nothing in the winner's column for nearly three years, he can rediscover the relaxed, confident version of himself that Clifford Lee described that October evening at Windsor.