Hardy annual China Castle can bloom at Lingfield today. This is emphatically the season for the gelding, who always comes good in January - a month in which he has gained no fewer than 12 of his career wins.

He has won early in the year in each of the last four seasons, including first time out three times.

There were definite signs of the "green shoots" of a recovery after a fallow summer from the seven-year-old in the way he ran in three races late in 1999.

And his largely barren mid-season means he has slipped down the handicap and looks the pick of the weights in today's Tote Exacta Coming Soon Stakes - a 0-100 event he would have been too highly rated to enter last spring.

Shrewd trainer Pat Haslam has few peers at plotting an all-weather Flat campaign and will doubtless have had this £10,000-added Showcase Handicap in mind for his China Castle for some time.

China Castle's stable-companion Nigel's Lad can make his class tell 250 miles north at Newcastle. He should get his chasing career back on track with victory in the Border Minstrel Novices' chase.