Unflappable Roger Charlton winning game of patience with Ebor contender Withhold

As he strolls serenely around the racecourse, Roger Charlton has the look of a man who clearly hasn't been told quite how hard it is to be a racehorse trainer. Seemingly unravaged by the demands of his profession, he remains pristine and unruffled while all manner of flak flies around his greying temples, leaving us to guess whether he's genuinely nerveless or simply a master of deception.

Surely even the unflappable master of Beckhampton must worry sometimes, especially when he has a horse in his yard like leading Sky Bet Ebor fancy Withhold, who has spent no fewer than 988 days in major breaks since his last win for Charlie Hills prior to joining Charlton in the spring of 2017. Undoubtedly the major handicap victories punctuating the lengthy absences will have offset the fraying of nerve endings, but the broken blood vessels at the heart of the drama can't have been easy to bear.

"I think the calmness is very much external," smiles the 69-year-old, whose cause may have been helped by not taking out his licence until the advanced age of 40. "You learn to hide things like that and you just have to be patient with a horse like him.