Watson on track for Royal Ascot Forgotten horse of the season Winker Watson is still on course to make his eventual return to the track in next week´s St James´s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot. Minor problems have cost his owners The Comic Strip Heroes and trainer Peter Chapple-Hyam the chance of top-level success on several occasions, with stiffness ruling the son of Piccolo out of the Middle Park Stakes while he was not moving well ahead of the Guineas. It is now nearly 11 months since Winker Watson last ran, when he took his unbeaten record to three in the July Stakes at Newmarket, catching River Proud close home from a long way off the pace. The Comic Strip Heroes are made up of Winker Watson´s breeder Joy Trotter and three founding members of the Betfair betting exchange - brothers Edward and Jeremy Wray, and Andrew Black. Black said: "Pete knows best but obviously we keep in pretty regular contact with him and the current feeling is that we are more likely than not to go to Ascot. "The St James´s Palace is the race that we´re targeting and a clash with Henrythenavigator, probably. "We get there if the horse gets there, but there´s no certainty with him. The path to full health with him is not straightforward but he´s odds-on to get there." Considering the setbacks, Black added: "When you see Winker after a race when his veins and muscles are bulging he looks like a finely-honed machine and I think the better the horse, the more prone they are to injuries because they put it all in. "The problems have been nothing, the tiniest imaginable but enough to put him out for periods of time. "It´s frustrating and I´m gutted we haven´t even been able to have a run in a Group One yet with a horse like that who we thought was Group One class halfway through his two-year-old career. "It hasn´t worked out but I really hope he has his day against Henrythenavigator, no-one has excuses and we find out who is the better horse."
