Asfoora thriving in lead-up to Royal Ascot defence in King Charles III

The Australian-based mare, trained by Henry Dwyer, beat Regional by a length after racing prominently over the famous five furlongs 12 months ago and was back in the winning groove when landing a Group 3 on home soil in mid-April.

Asfoora was only seventh in Group 1 company when last seen later that month but Dwyer reports the six-year-old to have travelled to Newmarket well and was pleased with a key piece of Monday work, in which she was sporting some headgear.

He said on Monday’s Nick Luck Daily Podcast: "We're glad to be back. We were a little bit precariously placed timing-wise in regards to how much we do before we came, and how much to do here, we were cutting it pretty fine in getting here two weeks before the race. So we gave her a pretty solid trial before she left down the Flemington straight, with the idea of mimicking the sort of thing she would be doing at Royal Ascot.

"She flew out six days after that but had a flow trip to Sydney as well before she could fly out so we didn't have enough time to do anything else other than that trial. She got here and we wanted to give her a few days to settle in so we couldn't do anything when we got here, so this was her first main piece of work - and probably her only main piece of work before she goes to the race next Tuesday. So it was an important morning."

As for the exercise in Newmarket, Dwyer revealed Asfoora appeared to respond well to the fitting of blinkers.

He said: "I saw her with blinkers on for the first time, just to mix things up a little bit. I just feel like she's been a little bit complacent in the last few months and maybe as she's getting older, you probably can't blame her for that, but I've always wanted to put a set of blinkers on her and now is the time.

"She galloped there with them on this morning, Oisin Murphy rode her, we had a lead horse with Lemos De Souza on board, they just galloped a nice four furlongs on the July Course. I think they said it was the first time any horse had been on there for about eight months after renovation, so it was beautiful ground.

"She just sat off the mate and steamed up to her on the inside and he lap full of horse underneath him at the line so that's what you want to see. She's nicely engaged, switched on and in good order."

Comparing last year's depth of field to Asfoora's potential rivals next week, which may include Believing, Night Raider and the returning runner-up from last summer, Regional, Dwyer said: "We sort of knew that the males who were in the race last year would be retiring so we lost Big Evs and although Bradsell wasn't in that race he met us a few times and has been retired to stud obviously.

"That leaves us and Believing and Regional and they're pretty well matched, there doesn't seem to be any three-year-olds who are going to go there rather than the Commonwealth Cup I suppose, so it's a similar sort of field and she certainly showed she was up to it last year.

"There's no reason why she can't be competitive again."

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