Deep thinking and infinite patience the key to Stoute's magic with older horses

There are few truffles of wisdom more frequently or more enthusiastically unearthed by followers of racing than the one that purports to capture the essence of Sir Michael Stoute.

It's not the obvious one, that he's a trainer who has batted away all the slings and arrows the game can throw at a man, and endures, after 47 years and at the age of 73, as one of the greats of the modern era. Nor the empirical one, that he has landed 15 British Classics, won more Royal Ascot races than anybody else and most other significant prizes in world Flat racing, to set alongside ten trainers' championships, a Triumph Hurdle and a Champion Hurdle.

These are the indisputable facts that any interested party can dig up in the record books. For the aficionado, however, there is always the need for something more, an underlying trait that distinguishes a body from his similarly illustrious contemporaries. Some trainers are born to be the Sprint King, others the First Lady of Aintree, but Stoute has long been designated the Master of the Older Horse.