Too Darn Hot finally follows John Gosden's plan after lucrative Sussex windfall

Flat trainers have most of a long winter to envisage the plans for their star horses but it is unlikely that even John Gosden’s most fanciful of predictions would have included the sort of path taken by Too Darn Hot.

Last year’s outstanding two-year-old has veered from ante-post Classic favourite to one who, by popular consensus, had not even trained on after defeat in his belated reappearance in the Dante Stakes. There was a problem with a splint, no British Guineas or Derby challenge and some suggestion that his colt fitted into the most unfortunate of brackets, that of the seven-furlong specialist with no worthwhile prizes to aim for.

It led to Gosden’s declaration that his charge had become the "worst-managed horse of the year" prior to a more encouraging effort in the St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot, and that conclusion would not have been revised hugely after the minor compensation of winning a weak-looking Prix Jean Prat.