Andrew Balding: inside track on my Lockinge contenders and more

We are very pleased with the results so far. The horses fit to race have performed really well, so we're thrilled with that.

We've had a couple of setbacks, obviously with injuries, particularly losing Gewan who was our most exciting three-year-old. That was a major blow.

Billy Jackson-Stops bought him as a breeze up horse for around £80,000 and he had used machine modelling to help in his decision. He was very well bought.

He was a very, very talented horse.  As I say, it was a big blow but unfortunately these things happen, fortunately very rarely. It's tough for the team but we had to try and get ourselves together and move on.

I don't get too obsessed with the Championship. You measure success by the number of races you win that qualify as big races.

The Racing Post has a stats section, which sets out big races won. What I try to do is to try and win at least one more than we did the year before.

It's not easy because it's a very competitive environment obviously and there are some very good trainers out there who do their job very well  which doesn't make it easy!

Actually, it is a race I have never won, so it would be great to do so and mean a lot. My father won it twice.

Blue Bolt [who was entered] isn't going to run. She won well last weekend, and she is going to wait and go to Ascot, for the Duke of Cambridge Fillies‘ Group 2. That is the obvious race for her.

Jonquil has some Newbury form, and we’d love to think he’d be competitive in that race. He certainly is an intended runner and I think Gladius is as well. We are trying to prepare him for the Wolferton Stakes at Royal Ascot. The danger is you win a Listed race beforehand and you pick up a penalty which makes it tougher to win at Ascot which is very much the aim of our operation which is to get horses to Ascot with good chances.

He will go there to have a run before Ascot. He is a talented horse, but he probably wants further than that.

It always is. I’ll have a better idea five days before the race when we know what the weather forecast is.

If the ground doesn’t turn up testing in any way, Jonquil has got everything it would take to suggest he’d have a good chance in the race.

He won a Greenham, was narrowly beaten in a French Guineas, has won a Celebration Mile and he had the perfect preparation the other day at Ascot where he won. So, he’s not without a chance.

It is very important. Newbury is a great place to go racing now. The vibe when you attend meetings is at an all-time high.

They're very good to our staff. They give them badges to attend, so we always get good support there, which is nice. It makes it extra special when we have winners there because most of the guys who work for us would have finished work and gone on to Newbury to support us.

So, from that point of view it's particularly rewarding when we do have success.

There's always the chance. The encouraging thing for British racing is that prize money is improving at our big meetings, which will make it more appealing and make it worthwhile having decent horses in training in England.

We've got American owners and they seem to enjoy it. It's very different from American racing. I think it's always going to be the case where it's a very good schooling ground for younger horses and then they can always continue their racing career in America as older horses. I hope that continues to be the case.

The trouble is that the races that are worth coming for, they might struggle to be competitive in. They're always going to be competitive in our two-year-old races and sprints but the further you go possibly the less competitive they'd be, and that's where the real money is for us.

It was an amazing privilege to train for the Queen. She was very knowledgeable, very interested on a daily basis in racing. It was one of the great privileges of my life to be able to talk to her on a regular basis. 

She was an amazing lady, so widely well-respected and such an important part of the racing world to have her as your flag bearer.

I've been really honoured again to train for the King and Queen now. They show a very keen interest in it and they're very keen to try and get horses that could be successful albeit on a smaller scale which is understandable.

You always put pressure on yourself whoever owns the horse. We all want horses to run well and win but running well particularly when there's a lot of people watching them is more important.

You don't really want Royal runners falling out the back of the TV screen! So, we're trying to avoid that if we can.