Everybody in racing is looking for an edge. With 7-4 the field, the punter is looking for a 2-1. The racecourse executive wonders which pop group will add 4,000 to the gate if booked for after-racing entertainment. The jockey on a confirmed front runner plans to slip the field out of the stalls. Trainers all seek an extra ingredient to help win them races consistently. At Sarsen Farm, a state-of-the-art new yard in Upper Lambourn built on the site of what was once a decrepit farmhouse then a Jockey Club tractor depot, Daniel and Claire Kubler are hoping that what a famous if ungrammatical advertisement for white goods used to call ‘the appliance of science’ is going to do the trick for them. Already experts have noted that they are building a reputation for having fewer injury problems than most and winning awards for team management at their yard.

The Kublers, both 39, were only the third pair – and the first married couple – to take out a joint training licence when regulations were changed to legalise joint operations. Only Paul and Oliver Cole and Simon and Ed Crisford got there before them and the Kublers have plenty of racing form. Claire grew up on the stud owned by her breeder parents Gary and Lesley Middlebrook. She worked for several years buying horses with the late Queen Elizabeth’s racing adviser John Warren and was assistant trainer to Jeremy Noseda. Daniel’s CV includes time working with worldwide top-notchers Roger Charlton, François Doumen and Gai Waterhouse. But their non-racing background is equally relevant: Claire has a Cambridge masters degree in physiology and worked for PWC after qualifying as a forensic accountant. Daniel, who studied equine and agricultural management, gives university lectures in genetics and exercise physiology.

Pretty well everything in the yard is designed on scientific principles, from feeding to the stable airflows to lighting that extends day length. Heart monitors allow them to check horses’ recovery rates from exercise. ‘If they do some really good work and recover quickly,’ says Claire, ‘then you’ve got a good one.’ With genuine enthusiasm they took me through some key points. Bio-banding, now becoming common in football, means assessing horses by maturity rather than age. Two-year-olds have their knees X-rayed when they come in to check whether the growth plates are open or closed. This enables the Kublers to know when to push on with horses and when to allow them more time. Prevention is better than cure, says Daniel: ‘Immature athletes are more susceptible to injury.’ Their accumulation of data is about spotting small problems before they become big ones and Sarsen Farm horses are winning a reputation for durability. The horses are genetically tested too for speed gene types such as the myostatin gene controlling muscle development. ‘It gives us a good indication of what trip the horse wants and helps owners to become informed.’

Their data mountain includes figures, too, on horses’ stride patterns. I recall Frankie Dettori saying he can sense what distance a horse needs within minutes of getting on its back. So is that nonsense? ‘Not at all,’ says Daniel. ‘A good jockey would be able to sense that. The data is all about supplementing horsemanship.’ It helps their staff too. ‘We have regular team meetings at which we stress core values,’ says Claire. Staff psychology tests are conducted to help a broad-brush type get on with a details person so that neither is frustrated. ‘Lots of trainers give instructions,’ says Daniel. ‘But they don’t explain why something must be done. We have a more mature conversation.’ Even with the scientific underpinning, they insist that horsemanship is crucial. When they tell work riders they want sectional furlongs run at precisely 13, 14 or 15 seconds, they mean it and after checking back on videos the riders appreciate why and how to do it.

When I wrote a book about Lambourn 20 years ago, if I had asked trainers about their bio-banding practices and core values I would probably have been politely shown the door. But the Kublers are moving with the times. People with the money to buy racehorses today often have working lives that involve data-processing and scientific testing, even if a few owners still yearn a little for the old-fashioned mystique of racing – a man in a flat cap on a hilltop muttering, ‘Nice ’orse.’ But Daniel insists that a science-based programme is only intensifying what people have been doing for years if not always knowing why.

It is doing the Kubler team no harm, with a strike rate of winners to runners at 16 per cent over two seasons and 26 winners last year. Watch out for Astro King, denied a clear run at York last time, and Don’t Tell Claire (a naming derived from an owner husband’s surprise present to his wife). Don’t Tell Claire is a curious colour, more roan than grey to me. And at last there was the merest whiff of marital disharmony: ‘A sort of dirty colour,’ said Daniel. ‘No, I call it gold,’ said Claire.