LADY SIMPLY AUR-SOME
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WESLEY WARD makes Lady Aurelia the stand-out of his strongest-ever Royal Ascot raiding party after watching her gallop on the course yesterday.
American trainer Ward will saddle 10 runners at the meeting, where he has been successful seven times, and believes they all have strong claims.
The 49-year-old former jockey was bubbling over with confidence after watching nine of his runners gallop up the home straight at Ascot.
“Ascot kindly let me use the racecourse and all of them worked beautiful and I’m very excited,” said Ward. “Going into these races, I’m more confident than I’ve ever been.”
Lady Aurelia, the spectacular winner of last year’s Queen Mary, impressed Ryan Moore in her final gallop before running in the King’s ® Stand Stakes next Tuesday. “She’s a little tiger,” said Ward. “She loves it here.
“Ryan said he could have ridden her with his two fingers as she was so relaxed but when he picked her up she was gone.”
Regarding riding arrangements, Ward said: “There’s nobody better than Frankie (Dettori). We go back a long way. Ryan has helped me out today.”
Dettori was due to ride out at Ascot but needed an extra day to recover from an injury to his shoulder after a fall at Yarmouth on Tuesday.
“It was unfortunate about what happened to Frankie yesterday. He will ride most of them. Johnny Velazquez will come over for Arawak in the Coventry Stakes.
“He did beautiful work against a very stout colt in McErin this morning. It’s the best work I’ve seen him do.”
Ward is 8-1 with Coral to train three or more winners next week – 11-8 to win one race, 9-4 to make it a double and 5-2 to draw a blank.
“You wouldn’t come over unless you thought you were going to win,” said Ward.
“You have to be extremely confident. Speaking with Ryan, who rode Princess Peggy, the one I had a question mark over, he said she is good enough for the Albany.
“Next week the fast ground looks ideal. When I first came over here I struggled on the first day but the next day we had two winners.
“If that had not happened I probably would not have come back.
“It’s an honour to be here. My children look upon it as Christmas.”