New Solario favourite has big shoes to fill as Charlie Appleby sets another exciting colt on the road to potential stardom

There are many paths to equine greatness but some of the more well-trodden ones go via Sandown's Solario Stakes, which has served as an important staging post for a number of top juveniles in recent years.

The Gosden yard has often been the one to follow and since the turn of the millennium it has saddled 11 runners in the Group 3 race, scoring with seven. Winning the Solario is no guarantee of future success but it is a fairly reasonable indicator and four of those seven went on to become multiple Group 1 winners with Raven's Pass, Kingman, Too Darn Hot and last year's winner Field Of Gold combining to win 11 times at the highest level. 

Juddmonte, who won last year with Irish 2,000 Guineas and St James's Palace Stakes winner Field Of Gold, were set to be represented this time by another promising juvenile in Publish. The two-year-old is more than bred for the job as a son of Kingman out of a sister to Arizona, herself a Grade 2 winner in the US, but was ruled out at the eleventh hour due to conditions, with the ground officially described as soft on Friday evening.