Baaeed delivers in style at Royal Ascot

BAAEED ensured Royal Ascot 2022 started with a bang as he produced another dominant display in the curtain-raising Queen Anne Stakes.

Unbeaten in seven previous starts, the William Haggastrained four-year-old was sent off the 1-6 favourite under Jim

Crowley. Always travelling powerfully over the straight mile, the Sea The Stars colt quickened smartly two furlongs out and soon stamped his authority on the Group One contest to score by a length and three-quarters, with Real World a clear second.

Haggas said: “He won nicely, he didn’t do a lot really. He looked like he tracked the right horse, the other horse ran well, but I don’t think he was extended fully.”

Australian raider Nature Strip ran out an emphatic winner of the King’s Stand Stakes, moving to the front two furlongs from home and finding another gear to leave the rest of the field trailing in his wake.

It was trainer Chris Waller’s first Royal Ascot winner and he said: “It means a lot. We don’t get the chance to race against the English, the Irish and even Americans today an awful lot.

“It’s pretty special to bring a horse all this way and compete against the best in the world and to win the way he did.

“It was breathtaking, it was a good display and he’s a very good horse.”

Coroebus was made to pull out all the stops to supplement his 2000 Guineas triumph with victory in the St James’s Palace Stakes.

When a gap came for William Buick’s mount with a furlong and a half to run, it looked like he would win comfortably, but Lusail refused to go down without a fight and My Prospero and Mighty Ulysses were both in there pitching to set up a grandstand finish. In the end Coroebus found just enough to hold on by a head from Lusail, with My Prospero third.