Tips to, hopefully, give you a good end to Royal Ascot
THERE is no escaping Royal Ascot, so let us see if we can get the jackpot up on Saturday. Or, more realistically, the placepot. Having more than one selection per race improves the chances of success. Two in each gives 64 combinations, so for a minimum 10p per line stake that would cost £6.40. Not that I am encouraging you. There are a lot of better things to spend your money on.
» 2.30: The Chesham Stakes is the first seven furlong race of the season for two-year-olds. Racecourse form is minimal. The most physically forward horses will have the best chances, and the market will speak, so we will pin our hopes on whichever are the first two in the market. One of them is sure to be trained by Aidan O’Brien, who has won four of the last seven runnings, for his yard has so much ammunition to choose from.
» 3.05: The Jersey Stakes, also over seven, for three-year-olds. On 2022’s performances Noble Style is the one, but he has disappointed twice this season. Two 8/1 shots at the time of writing to consider are O’Brien’s The Antarctic has solid form over six, so it is interesting that he is trying seven today. Roger Varian’s Enfjaar (two runs, two wins) could be anything.
» 3.40: The six furlongs QEII Jubilee Stakes. People seem to think the foreign sprinters will have this to themselves, yet Kinross was unbeatable over seven last year and then won the Champions Day Sprint over six - 8/1 is a huge price for him, with Dettori up, as is 33/1 for the Australian horse The Astrologist, whose Haydock run will have put him right for this.
» 4.20: The Hardwicke, over a mile-and-a-half. Pyledriver is always underestimated but Hukum is the rightful favourite and Changingoftheguard, a course and distance winner last year, is a fair price at 7/1.
» 5.00: The Wokingham. You could pick half the field for this sprint handicap and not get one of them placed. Token suggestions are the Shadwell gelding Khanjar, a course and distance winner, and Probe, for whom Jenny Candlish has booked Ryan Moore.
» 5.35: This mile-and-a-quarter handicap for three-year-olds is for potential Group horses, such as Tagabawa and Laafi.
Look out for any special offering odds on a Frankie Dettori winner on this, his last day at Royal Ascot. Surely he will get one – won’t he?
Hopefully the animal rights protesters will not have disrupted the royal meeting. Whatever they might do pales into insignificance compared with wartime events. One summer’s day in 1944 horses were about to leave the paddock at Windsor for the 3.30 when an announcement was made over the public address warning that a V1, a flying bomb, was approaching and that everyone should take cover. Luckily, the bomb fell half-a-mile away. More than 300 buildings were damaged. Miraculously, nobody was killed, though 60 people were injured by flying glass. Nobody was hurt on the racecourse, with the possible exception of the jockey who had dived to the ground only to be flattened by a large trainer doing the same and landing on top of him.
Afterwards, everyone picked themselves up and carried on as normal. The 3.30 was off just four minutes late.