Tom Lacey hot streak continues as progressive Vado Forte lands feature

There are conventional hot streaks, and then there is the sort of scorching winning run that Tom Lacey is on, for Vado Forte was his sixth winner from his last eight runners when beating Imperial Cup hero Mr Antolini in the £50,000 totepool Sussex Champion Hurdle.

It's one thing to send out winner after winner with bluebloods in uncompetitive two-year-old races, as David Loder for example once did, but five of Lacey's six recent wins have come in open handicaps. What's more it would have been seven wins from his last eight runners but for the fatal injury suffered by Isle Of Ewe in another handicap at Wetherby on Thursday.

Lacey, who has been training seriously in his own name for only the last three or four seasons, boasts impressive statistics from all sorts of angles – this was his second winner from only three runners at Plumpton, for example – but he is quietly understated and largely lets his horses do the talking.