MAFAAZ went into the innovative Kentucky Derby Trial at Kempton Park racetrack, UK, with the best form on offer and came out a narrow winner.

With lines to Group 1 winner Crowded House and also the Breeders Cup juvenile winner Donativum, Mafaaz is not as big an outsider for the first leg of the US Triple Crown as many may think.

There were understandable murmurings from US trainers that a place in the Kentucky Derby may be reserved for a substandard Uk runner. In Mafaaz they do have a worthy entrant.

Mafaaz will be targeted at the Blue Grass Stakes, the Kentucky Derby trial on a similar all-weather track to Kempton's. How he shows up in that race will decide whether trainer John Gosden, who knows all about the US horse racing scene having trained there earlier in his career, takes his new star on to Churchill Downs for the big one.