FOLLOWING record spring sunshine figures, it is not only farmers and gardeners desperately anxious for the weather to break - so too is Marcus Tregoning.

The Whitsbury trainer has earmarked this month’s Royal Ascot for the seasonal debut of Mohaather, a leading fancy for last year’s 2,000 Guineas before injuring himself when winning his prep race, the Greenham Stakes at Newbury, in impressive style.

The classy colt was sidelined for six months until he finished fifth out of 16 in the Queen Elizabeth 11 Stakes at Ascot in October after losing his place early on and meeting traffic.

“But for that, Jim Crowley thought he would have finished second or third. That said he ran a good race for a horse who had been off the track for some time and the ground was desperate.”

Tregoning is naturally anxious not to run the four-year-old, who has been entered for the Queen Annes Stakes on the opening day of the festival, on firm ground. His grass gallops are riding fast as they have ever been and now his string are predominately using the all-weather alternative.

“If the weather was to break or if we got thunderstorms, that would be the race I have in mind for him.”

However Tregoning is far from certain Mohaather gets a mile and should he not do so, he will be reverted to six furlongs.

“He certainly has got a lot of speed.”

His other major contender for the meeting is the five-year-old Power of Darkness who won valuable handicaps at Salisbury and Ascot last season which has left him with a rating of 98 and on the fringe of making the cut for the one mile Britannia Handicap. “I just wish he had gone up a couple of lbs.”

Acknowledging his recovery from a fractured pelvis, he remarked:”We have to be very guarded with him.”

Tregoning, who won the Derby in 2006 with Sir Percy and has trained multiple group winners, has about 60 horses in his yard this season but has nothing engaged in the classics.

“Hopefully I will have better two-year-olds this year, sharper bred six furlong horses. It will make a nice change. In time, they will run, maybe the first in three weeks.”

Of the three-year-olds, he spoke well of Impressor who lived up to his name at Salisbury before disappointing at Newbury and Newmarket at the back end of the season.

“He is going well and I am happy with him. Unfortunately he’s had to miss a lot of the races he would have run in, like the Greenham, but he showed very good form with cut in the ground. It’s very frustrating but we have to be careful with him and I wouldn’t run him on fast ground.”

As for his aspirations for the season, they are simple - keeping the horses healthy and the staff and owners happy.

He quipped: “It’s a little like being a member of a gentlemen’s club. Even if you cannot go, you still have to pay the bills and my owners have been. They have been very supportive and patient.”