Quiet time at an end so Burke can roar again

PATIENCE, and a lorry-load of it, has been required by Karl Burke when training Quiet Reflection this year but that will look like time well invested if the filly wins tomorrow’s British Champions Sprint at Ascot. With significant rain predicted to provide the soft ground Quiet Reflection excels on, the Burke confidence is rising to a point which would have seemed unlikely when she sustained a pelvic stress fracture in her final gallop before Royal Ascot in June. Burke’s fellow owners of Quiet Reflection, he admits, were close to drawing stumps on a racing career that had seen her land two group one races in 2016 — the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot and Haydock Sprint Cup — and transform from a £44,000 buy into a galloping asset worth at least £2million. Burke (right) said: ‘The other owners thought I was mad and that she was finished. But I always was as confident as you can be with any horse that we would get her back.’ That happened when Quiet Reflection romped home in a group three race at Naas last month, her first run since an unplaced comeback in May. Burke added: ‘She has to step her game up again but I think she will. She looks a real mature sprinting filly now. ‘We know we are up against a fantastic horse in favourite Harry Angel. There is Caravaggio and [last year’s winner] The Tin Man but she will run a big race and ease in the ground will swing things in our favour a little bit.’ Even just a placed effort from Quiet Reflection will take Burke to £1million in prize money for the second successive season. He admits he is a more measured, relaxed trainer than before he served a one-year ban in 2009 for falling foul of new inside information rules, a breach which was more naive than malicious. The 12 months Burke had to spend away from Spigot Lodge stable in Middleham, North Yorkshire, could have finished the family business. Horse numbers dropped from 80 down to 20, almost all owned by the Burke family. But by Spring next year that will have risen to 130, an expansion based on consistently buying good horses to sell on at a profit. They include Libertarian, bought for £42,000 and second in the 2013 Derby after being sold to Godolphin. Gems unearthed this season include €24,000 purchase Unfortunately, winner of the group one Prix Morny and sold in to race for the Cheveley Park Stud, and Molecomb Stakes winner Havana Grey, who cost €70,000. While he did not buy her, Burke also has a Classic hope in his stable in Group One Fillies’ Mile winner Laurens.