Long-absent Toast Of New York sprinkles star dust on Lingfield card

It will have been 1,130 days since Toast Of New York last ran in a race, when he famously finished second, beaten a nose behind Bayern in the $5million Breeders' Cup Classic for Upper Lambourn trainer Jamie Osborne.

On Wednesday, the well-travelled six-year-old brightens up a midweek all-weather Lingfield card under Frankie Dettori with four rivals taking him on for a share of £19,000 in the Betway Conditions Stakes (1.10) .

Toast Of New York spent time at stud, but has been back with Osborne since March. The trainer said: "It's been a long, steady road to get to this point and I'm grateful for Al Shaqab having the patience to let me do it in what I think is the proper time.

"I'd be pretty sure we've done enough to get him race-fit. He's done plenty of miles at home and he's been to both Kempton and Lingfield and worked well."

He added: "He looks a lot stronger and heavier than he was as a three-year-old, but in fact he's only 5kg heavier than when he was second at the Breeders' Cup."

Osborne acknowledged it was a challenge to bring back a horse after an absence stretching back over three years.

"Well, I've never done it before!" he said. "It's obviously very different to bringing a horse back from a normal break. Normally it would take three months to get a horse fit, but after 1,100-odd days you basically have to start from scratch and that's why it's been so helpful not to feel pressure to hurry it up."

Osborne has not stopped dreaming with the horse who took him to within a nose of the highest heights.

Before the Breeders' Cup, the son of Thewayyouare went from winning a Wolverhampton maiden to landing the UAE Derby in 2014 in the colours of Michael Buckley.

He said: "There are several routes he could go, assuming Wednesday goes to plan. The ultimate ambition would be to get to the Pegasus World Cup, but I might be dreaming with that. He'd need to be every bit as good as he was to make it over there, but he wouldn't need to be for something like a Winter Derby."

Toast Of New York will wear a hood for the first time. His trainer explained: "The hood is more for the preliminaries. He's a big, aggressive horse and was very badly behaved before Santa Anita, he nearly lost the plot.

"He did the same at Kempton on his first racecourse gallop, so we put the hood on him at Lingfield and he was much better behaved, so we've kept it on the assumption that there isn't much downside: he races as he races."

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