Killer hawks and lots of lobster: how the stage is set for Ascot

From precision mowing to kilos of crustaceans, the scale of preparations for the meeting is huge

Down by the winner’s enclosure, Jeremy Lockwood, Ascot’s head gardener, is about to embark on his daily inspection round. A pair of shears ready in a holster round his waist, he is poised at any moment to pluck away an expired rose bloom or past-it geranium.

This is how he spends much of his time ahead of the Royal Meeting: deadheading in the insistent pursuit of perfection.

“Once you see one you can’t stop,” he says, swiftly dispatching a spent bloom from one of the 17,000 bedding plants he and his team of gardeners have installed in the past couple of weeks. “Before you know where you are an hour’s gone.”

A couple of days before the meeting starts, Ascot thrums with such activity. Tom Grantham, the stables manager, has been in since five (“no point trying to sleep,” he says) preparing accommodation for the visiting thoroughbreds, ensuring each can bed down on freshly installed wood shavings or shredded newspaper according to pre-ordered taste.

Keith Wilson, the course’s bird handler, has just unleashed Harrison the Harris Hawk to swoop among the grandstand gables, scaring off any pigeon foolish enough to think it can take up residence (only the day before, two were not quick enough to maintain their punter’s luck).

Meanwhile, Chris Stickels, the clerk of the course, is walking the mile-long straight, which has been unsullied by hooves for the past six weeks to ensure it is a verdant bloom of perfection come race day.

Elsewhere, a lorry is being ushered through the gates, its cargo some of the 7,000 lobsters, ready to take their place amid the 3,000 menu items prepared in 30 kitchens to be sold in 120 bars and restaurants.

The crustacean invasion gives hint of the scale of the Ascot operation: this, according to Jonathan Parker, the course’s director of food and beverage, is “a logistics beast. It’s like trying to run an airport terminal.”

Though even Heathrow might be pushed to match the numbers here. During the Royal meeting, more than 300,000 people will filter through the gates, eager to enjoy not just the eight Group One races sprinkled through the programme’s 30 sprints and dashes, but a week of unsurpassed ceremonial. Led by the daily post-lunch procession down the course, in which the Queen and members of the Royal family wave from horse-drawn carriages, this is a sporting occasion suffused like no other in regal technicolor.

“We are realistic here,” says Nick Smith, Ascot’s director of racing and communications. “We believe we run the best race meeting in the world. But we recognise it is the pageantry which elevates it to another level.”

And it is a level which appears to be as popular as at any time during the Royal Meeting’s 307-year existence. Last year Ascot posted record pre-tax profits of £6.1 million – this on turnover that had increased 6.7 per cent on the previous year’s returns. The net debt, largely incurred in the construction of the sweeping grandstand opened in June 2006, was reduced by some £12million. Success encourages success: at this year’s meeting, a record £7million of prize money will be offered to attract the finest thoroughbreds from around the world. Twenty years ago this was a purely British event. Now, it is global. In addition to dozens of the best in Britain, 80 Irish horses, 17 from France, 10 from America and one from Australia will compete.

Tradition is everywhere at Ascot. It is there in the sing-song around the bandstand at the end of every afternoon (Sweet Caroline is a staple). It is there in the lines in which the lawn in the winner’s enclosure is mown at the meeting, twice a day, at dawn and dusk.

And it is there in the dress code. From the Royal Enclosure, where gentlemen shall wear morning coats and the hems of ladies dresses must not finish north of the knee, to the Village Enclosure, where midriffs must remain covered, the rules are clear and present. “We don’t want people to feel intimidated,” says Juliet Slot, Ascot’s chief commercial officer, of the dress code. “It’s there to help them enjoy the event.”

Final touches (clockwise from left): The parade ring is trimmed to perfection by Jon Curtin while head gardener Jeremy Lockwood ensures a picture perfect scene for race week. A three-metre bronze Andalusian stallion sculpture is lifted into place, while bird handler Keith Wilson has Harrison the Harris Hawk ready to take on the pigeons

And enjoy the event they do. The average spend on an Ascot outfit was £340 last year. Like most visitors, Slot herself will wear a different hat on each of the five days of the Royal week, all of them currently stored in the backroom staff ’s very own hat room. “The most frequent question we receive is: am I allowed to wear this hat?” she says. “If anyone turns up not quite in the right gear, we can loan them a hat, or a pashmina if they have an off-the-shoulder dress, or a slip if their hem is high. We don’t want to turn anyone away.”

It all means, when the favourite gallops home in the Gold Cup on Thursday there will be plenty of hats to be flung in the air.

But when the crowd are not engaged in watching the racing, the insistence is there will be lots to occupy the attention. And the appetite. Lobster is but the start of it. Over the past decade Ascot has morphed into a gastronomic festival, awash with celebrity chefs producing Michelin-starred dishes from a raft of temporary kitchens.

Where once Dover Sole was the most exotic offering, now an international food emporium has bloomed across the course, serving everything from Japanese sushi to Mexican burrito. Though afternoon tea of cucumber sandwiches and fruitcake remains a staple.

Ascot tries to ensure nobody waits more than 10 minutes to be served in a bar or restaurant, but there will be those who might benefit from a delay in service. Ascot has not been immune to the rash of drunken brawling currently infecting racecourses.

“We will have spotters out to keep an eye on anyone who might be over-indulging,” explains Parker. “We try to intervene early with gentle stewarding to ensure what is a tiny minority don’t spoil it for the rest. But it is in the end a social event. Drink will be involved.”

Though it is after the well-oiled have been encouraged home, after the post-race bands have put away their instruments, after the horses have been stabled, that the real scale of the Ascot operation becomes clear.

An army of 400 staff will come in overnight to clear up and restore the place to its pristine condition for the next day. No doubt as the cleaners arrive for their unseen shift, they will pass the tireless Lockwood, still hard at work in the flower beds.