Racing: Kinane on Protector but top draw needed

Perhaps the key moment of the Lincoln is played out tomorrow morning, when the significant area is not the lush turf of Doncaster but the rather less salubrious setting, amid the smoke and clinking glasses, of the Flying Fox Suite in the grandstand.

Here, Claire King, the infamous Emmerdale killer, will have a similar effect on roughly half the horses which will come steaming down Town Moor on Saturday afternoon. Ms King will conduct the draw and those trainers who are selected late to make their own choice of stall will almost certainly be left with both high numbers and an early gauge of their impending fate.

David Arbuthnot, the Lambourn trainer, has done as much as he can to smooth out the vagaries of the Flat's first milestone. His Lord Protector has been pointed at the mile contest for some time and he will have Michael Kinane on his back at the weekend. The main factor, though, is out of his hands.

"I probably pitched the horse in a bit hard last year when you consider the only race he's won is a maiden on the all-weather, but he ran some crackers," Arbuthnot said yesterday. "The horse went wrong, got jarred up at Newbury [in August] and that knocked out the rest of his three-year-old career. When you have to rest a horse that early on then you can bring him back in the winter, and get him ready for something early on the Flat. He's fresh and this fits into place.

"The race at Wolverhampton [11 days ago when fourth in the Lincoln Trial] certainly brought him on and I'm not too worried about the ground because he seems to handle either extreme.

"We've got Mick because you've got to try to get the best you can. Now we've got to get through the draw. Looking at the statistics for the last five years, since they've put in the new drainage, you've got to be low. I'm going to look for between 12 and seven."

The Saxon Gate trainer arranged the snip for Lord Protector over the winter. There are no hard feelings. The gelding is working well and was yesterday the best-backed Lincoln horse. William Hill had a cut of their own for the four-year-old, reducing him to 11-1 (from 14-1).

There are now no prices at all about another fancied horse in the second-leg of the spring double, the Grand National. Supreme Glory, who had been second favourite for Aintree, is now out for the rest of the season. Pat Murphy, the trainer, said yesterday that the nine-year-old had sustained a minor tendon injury.

"I'd imagine his preparation next season will be geared to Aintree again. He has only had 17 races in his life so there are not a lot of miles on the clock," Murphy said.

Aidan O'Brien made a surprise journey from Co Tipperary to Lingfield yesterday, working his Kentucky Derby hope Johannesburg and the 2,000 Guineas favourite Hawk Wing and four other horses on the Polytrack surface.

O'Brien said later: "First Shoal Creek led Rock Of Gibraltar and Johannesburg over a mile at just a nice canter. Then in the second group, Sholokov led Hawk Wing and Castle Gandolfo in a similar exercise. We found it a lovely surface. It's been hard to work them at home because of the wet weather and this was a speeding-up process of their fitness levels."