THERE was lots of Oaks talk after the Musidora Stakes at York on Wednesday. And why wouldn’t there be? The Musidora is a good Oaks trial.

Admittedly only one Musidora winner has followed up in the Oaks in the last decade (Sariska, 2009), but there have been lots of pointers in that time. Alexandrova was a close-up second in the Musidora in 2006 before she went and won the Oaks by six lengths, while The Fugue won the Musidora in 2012 and was a running-on third in the Oaks, beaten a total of three quarters of a length.