JOHNSTON: KING CAN RULE

TRAINER Mark Johnston believes King’s Advice — the 6-1 favourite for Saturday’s Sky Bet Ebor Handicap at York — may not yet have reached his full potential.

King’s Advice has won eight of nine races this season and his handicap mark has risen 41lb since getting off the mark at Lingfield in March.

Johnston said: ‘The Ebor is an extremely tough race but he will be competitive again.’

King’s Advice is superbly bred — his sire is Frankel and dam the unbeaten 2001 Cheveley Park Stakes winner Queen’s Logic.

So after a mediocre record in France and Germany, the horse’s achievements are remarkable given that sending him to Johnston was a last roll of the dice.

Johnston said: ‘I did not know what to expect from him. The report from his last trainer was that he was virtually untrainable. We just let him settle into our regime and then ran him. The rest is history.’

Saturday’s running of the richest handicap in Europe will be the first time the historic Ebor has been worth £1million. Top weight will be Salouen, who is trained by Sylvester Kirk and was fourth to Enable in the King George on his last start. It will be his first run in a handicap.

Johnston, who also runs Baghdad and Making Miracles in the Ebor, saddles Elarqam in tomorrow’s Group One Juddmonte International Stakes, the feature race of the opening day of York’s four-day Ebor meeting. The runners are headed by Crystal Ocean, trained by Sir Michael Stoute.