Key events
Greg Wood
5.35pm GOLDEN GATES STAKES HANDICAP preview
We are very much into the final furlong of this year’s Royal meeting when the Golden Gates Handicap rolls around, but it has been relatively friendly to the punters since its arrival on the schedule in 2020 with two winning favourites at 9-4 and 5-2, including Hand Of God, who did the backers a big favour when landing a gamble 12 months ago. Plenty of punters are putting their faith in Ralph Beckett’s Seraph Gabriel this time around, and the form of his close second behind Fifth Column at Sandown in April looks more solid after the winner there ran seventh, and first home on his side, in Thursday’s Britannia Handicap. Best Secret, a rare French raider in an Ascot handicap, did well to overcome a pace bias in a similar contest at Longchamp in April and is a recent recruit to the Wathnan Racing operation, while Glen To Glen has a new trainer in Joseph O’Brien after running for Jim Bolger when third at Leopardstown in March. He is up just 2lb and has a top rider in Dylan Browne McMonagle in place of an inexperienced apprentice. Ernst Blofeld is yet another recent Wathnan purchase, and also very much in the mix after finishing a close fourth in the London Gold Cup at Newbury in mid-May, with two next-time winners in behind.
SELECTION: ERNST BLOFELD
Greg Wood
5pm WOKINGHAM STAKES HANDICAP preview
Where to start with the Wokingham, the last big handicap of the Royal meeting and a potential week-saver for punters who are on the ropes after four-and-a-half days? After two winners from stall one on day four, even the draw is not cut-and-dried (although I suspect that the high numbers may still be the place to be). But there is at least a short-priced favourite to consider, almost as short, in fact, as the favourite for the Group One sprint over the same trip earlier on the card. More Thunder got up late to win a hot race at Newmarket’s Guineas meeting having been run off his feet in the early part of the race, and looks sure to be suited by the stiff six at Ascot off a 6lb higher mark.
Aramram, the runner-up there and re-opposing today, was a winner next time up to give the form a really solid look, while Purosangue, in seventh, had a very sympathetic ride and still finished within two lengths of the winner. Purosangue ran mainly in Pattern company last year, including the five-furlong Group One sprint on the opening day of this meeting, and is 8lb better off with More Thunder today having been dropped 2lb since that run. I fancy him to run a big race with Oisin Murphy doing the steering from stall 22, although a long list of very plausible opponents includes Jarraaf, second in a Group Three over track and trip last autumn, and Orazio, sixth and third in this race over the last two years and 1lb lower in the weights compared to 2024.
SELECTION: PUROSANGUE
Market movers (via Oddschecker)
3.40pm – Santono Reve 4/1 into 5/2
5.35pm – Sallaal 8/1 into 9/2
6.10pm – Samui 9/2 into 5/2
Horse racing fans, whether watching on ITV or the dedicated racing channels, will now be familiar with the gastronomic delights served up to the presenters at our major meetings by the chefs working at the tracks in those long hours to fill before the action starts. Indeed, as I write this David “my mouth is already watering” Craig on Sky Sports News is already sampling one such dish.
On Friday I had my first experience of the Royal Enclosure and having seen the inspiring Raymond Blanc over the years I was delighted to be able to meet the great man, now a decade into his time as the resident chef in the prime dining spot at Ascot, the Panoramic Restaurant. I expected a short chat but 52 minutes later, after an absorbing interview accompanied by an exquisite salmon and caviar dish produced with the help of the “molecular gastronomy” he first introduced in the early 1980s, I pressed the stop button on the recording.
Blanc had wanted to be part of the Royal Ascot experience since the late Queen Mother, who the Frenchman had persuaded to sing La Marseillaise in his famous Oxford restaurant kitchen, invited him to the meeting in 1981 and has spoken of the meeting’s “extraordinary elegance, beauty, fun and joy”.
Blanc’s passions now, he explained on Friday, and what he calls “the pillars of my values” are “seasonality – the best produce of the season sourced as close to home as possible” and a change he wants to see at his top-end of fine dining, what he terms “responsible luxury”.
He is putting this into practice at his two Michelin-starred restaurant near Oxford, Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, with, among other things a bee village, organic farm and medicinal herb garden.
“The luxury market is going to be so different. It will have a conscience. Luxury by nature has always been careless and bad for the environment and for people … a gold-plated, beautiful statue with toxic values. Luxury has to change and it will change. You might accuse me of being a raving optimist and it may take years but it will happen.”
Royal Procession Stakes, 2pm
Rory Bremner is among the guests in the carriages today, hopefully providing a Peter O’Sullevan impression or two.
O’Sullevan, of course, would help describe the procession when he was commentating for the BBC and was heard, as our regular reader knows, at the Serpentine gallery exhibition by artist Mark Wallinger which I saw back in 1994 when one of his installations, called ‘Royal Ascot’, consisted of a series of video monitors on top of wheeled flight cases, each isolating the royal carriage’s leisurely progress down the track on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (respectively, as it was then) of the meeting with, as the British Council points out in their description of the artwork, “the difference from day to day is barely discernible, just as the four commentaries merge in a confused blather.”
4.20pm JERSEY STAKES preview
A familiar mix in the Jersey of runners dropping back in trip and class after failing to measure up in a Guineas, and progressive, lightly-raced types that may improve past them on their way to betting things. Ya Mo Be there, Benevento and Seagulls Eleven all ran in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, finishing eighth, 10th and last of 11 respectively, but California Dreamer is definitely a runner on his form in the Irish equivalent, where he outran odds of 50-1 to finish second, with Comanche Brave, today’s favourite, back in fifth. The obvious potential improvers, meanwhile, are Marvelman, for the Andrew Balding/Oisin Murphy combo, and Owen Burrows’s Remmooz, who made a successful racecourse debut in April and then followed up in a novice at Doncaster earlier this month.
SELECTION: REMMOOZ
3.40 QUEEN ELIZABETH II JUBILEE STAKES preview
A truly international renewal of the final day’s feature event, which brings together the best sprinting form lines from France, Britain, Asia and Australia in a six-furlong dash on fast racing ground. Timeform’s ratings have Lazzat, who is very weak in the market so far today, at the top of the pile, a couple of pounds ahead of Inisherin, last year’s Commonwealth Cup winner, and Topgear, an impressive winner – over seven furlongs – at Longchamp last time, with Satono Reve and Flora Of Bermuda a further 1lb behind. The races to consider most closely when weighing up the likely winner include the Hong Kong Sprint at Sha Tin in December, the Prix du Palais-Royal at Longchamp last month and the Duke Of York at York, also last month, and while I’m very hopeful that Satono Reve will get a first ever Japanese victory at the Royal meeting on the board, it is a wide-open race and feels every bit as competitive as the Wokingham Handicap over the same trip later on the card.
SELECTION: SATONO REVE.
Hong Kong Sprint, Sha Tin, 8 Dec 24 (Satono Reve).
https://youtu.be/OgaXbSrOgAI?si=h6q9LgS9vwUPqWut
Chairman’s Sprint, Sha Tin 27 Apr 25 (Satono Reve).
https://youtu.be/7MB7qsFCdMs?si=0e_Vc66LbLN97XV8
Prix Maurice Du Gheest, Deauville 4 Aug 24 (Lazzat, Flora Of Bermuda, Great Generation).
https://youtu.be/cUJoEzW8jG8?si=eTbGE4qI6P4zLMP4
Duke Of York Stakes, York 14 May 25 (Inisherin, Flora Of Bermuda, Elite Status).
https://youtu.be/mbAGWEG1u00?si=aR8P91j4RPcnOwhi
Commonwealth Cup, Ascot 21 Jun 24 (Inisherin).
https://youtu.be/Heqsk-110Xs?si=XpAlzMhwHLBBfGqf
San Domenico Stakes, Rosehill 31 Aug 24 (Storm Boy)
https://youtu.be/MpZHfAS5cEw?si=x0EI1VGoTyupy2GL
Golden Rose, Rosehill, 28 Sept 24 (Storm Boy).
https://youtu.be/zboFBQIG63Y?feature=shared
Prix du Palais-Royal, Longchamp 25 May 25 (Topgear, Sajir).
https://youtu.be/CY3BVSUZNHw?si=ilknivsfyiGLeIqq
British Champions Sprint Stakes, Ascot, 19 Oct 24 (Flora Of Bermuda, James’s Delight, Elite Status)
https://youtu.be/0knDGLoOR9o?feature=shared
Greg Wood
3.05pm HARDWICKE STAKES preview
Winning a single Group One race is a huge and very rare achievement for any thoroughbred. Winning seven is extraordinary and yet, Rebel’s Romance rarely seems to get the credit that his record deserves, perhaps because his seven top-level wins were recorded in Germany, Hong Kong, Dubai and the US, where he is a dual winner of the Breeders’ Cup Turf. He will be fancied to make a Group One breakthrough in Britain in next month’s King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes, having been a solid third in the same race last season, and will be looking to set himself up for that with a win here over the same course and distance.
Comments about Charlie Appleby’s form at the meeting in relation to Treanmor in the preceding Chesham Stakes apply equally to Rebel’s Romance, but he looks a very solid favourite back at his ideal trip after his class got him home over 14 furlongs in last month’s Yorkshire Cup. Joseph O’Brien’s Al Riffa, blinkered for the first time today, is his main rival according to Timeform ratings, and he is also a multiple Group One winner having taken the National Stakes as a juvenile and the Grosser Preis von Berlin at Hoppegarten last August. He was last seen finishing a three-length fourth behind Sosie, the current favourite for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, in the Prix Ganay at Longchamp.
SELECTION: REBEL’S ROMANCE
Greg Wood
2.30pm CHESHAM STAKES preview
Aidan O’Brien has won five of the last nine runnings of this race, and two of those wins were with fillies that won the same Leopardstown maiden that Moments Of Joy, his only runner this year, took just over a fortnight ago. That clearly makes her a major player, but she is not the favourite, as Godolphin’s main trainer, Charlie Appleby, has picked this race out as the next step for Treanmor, an eye-wateringly expensive yearling at last October’s sales who made short work of his field on debut at Newmarket last month. Appleby has been having a difficult time of it so far this week, drawing a blank with 10 runners so far, and in fact at the Royal meeting full stop in recent seasons. His last winner here was the 33-1 shot Naval Crown on the final day in 2022, and his last 36 Royal runners, including a 5-4 favourite and two at 6-4, have all been beaten. It’s fair to say he could do with a change of fortune.
Another runner who deserves a mention is Humidity, not least as he is a full brother to Holloway Boy, the 40-1 winner of this race in 2022. That, unusually for a Royal winner, was Holloway Boy’s racecourse debut, but his bro has had a run, scraping home by a short-head in a maiden at Newbury before being sold to the ever-expanding Wathnan Racing operation.
SELECTION: TREANMOR
The going for day five of is, surprise surprise, Good to Firm
GoingStick (the higher the figure the faster the ground) at 8.30am:
Stands’ side: 8.8
Centre: 8.5
Far side: 8.8
Round: 7.4
The jockeys switched sides yesterday so, as Tom Collins pointed out on ITV Racing this morning, it’s difficult to gauge which side of the track will be favoured. That’s not much help but it’s the honest answer!
Non-runners
3.40pm Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes (Group 1)
6 James’s Delight (unsuitable ground)
5.00pm Wokingham Stakes (Heritage Handicap)
8 Symbol Of Honour ( temperature)
5.35pm Golden Gates Stakes
15 The King’s Falcon (bad scope)
Not a single horse has run up the stands’-side today, when the jockeys couldn’t get enough of it yesterday and today’s GoingStick reading suggested it was still faster! Go figure
— Paul Kealy (@PKealyracing) June 20, 2025
Good morning. And after yesterday’s sojourn to Ascot in my finery (of which more later) here’s the run down of today’s action and after ginving you the going and non-runner details I will start publishing Greg Wood’s previews of all the races.
2.30pm – Chesham Stakes (7f)
3.05pm – Hardwicke Stakes (1m 4f)
3.40pm – Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes (6f)
4.20pm – Jersey Stakes (7f)
5.00pm – Wokingham Stakes (Heritage Handicap) (6f)
5.35pm – Golden Gates Stakes (Handicap) (1m 2f)
6.10pm – Queen Alexandra Stakes (2m 6f)
Preamble
Greg Wood
Welcome back to Ascot on the fifth bright, warm morning in a row at this year’s Royal meeting, on a day when the biggest crowd of the week might just witness a moment of racing history in the afternoon’s feature event, the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes (3.40pm).
Japan has become one of global racing’s powerhouses over the last quarter of a century, winning major races on all continents and often bringing plenty of travelling fans along for the ride. Their record at Royal Ascot, however, and in fact, at Ascot full stop, is a tale of woe, with the occasional near-miss along the way.
Agnes World, the first Japanese-trained runner at the meeting, finished second, beaten just over a length, in what was then the Group Two King’s Stand Stakes, when he was giving weight to his 22 rivals (and in his next race, won the Group One July Cup, the summer sprinting championship). One of his stable companions finished 22nd in the same race, and since then, only one of 10 runners from Japan has even reached the first five (Shahryar, in the 2022 Prince Of Wales’s Stakes).
In Noriyuki Hori’s Satono Reve, though, the country has one of its strongest contenders for years, and riding legend Joao Moreira has flown in to take the reins. The six-year-old has form that puts him within a length or two of Ka Ying Rising, the top-rated sprinter in global racing, and has been given plenty of time to get used to his new surroundings having arrived in Newmarket in early May.
I think he could be the horse to finally break Japan’s duck here, and the market seems to agree as he has been backed from 9-2 to 5-2 favourite this morning. Inisherin, last year’s winner of the Commonwealth Cup here, is next in on 9-2, and in a truly international field, two French-trained runners, Lazzat and Topgear, are next in at 5-1 and 6-1 respectively.
The Jersey Stakes (4.20pm), for three-year-olds over seven furlongs, and the Hardwicke Stakes, over a mile-and-a-half and a race that has often been a stepping stone to the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes here in July, are the main supporting races on today’s card, along with the ever-popular Wokingham Handicap at 5pm.
The going remains good-to-firm all over after further watering last night, and temperatures are expected to climb towards 30C as the afternoon goes on, which should ensure that the track is bursting at the seams by the time the royal procession makes its way down the track just before 2pm. The attendance has been up on every day of the meeting so far – it was an 8% jump on Friday – and there is every chance the course will complete a full house today, for the second year in a row.
John & Thady Gosden are tied at five apiece in the race to be top trainer, Oisin Murphy is just two wins behind Ryan Moore after taking the last race here on Friday and you can follow all the action and slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as the 2025 Royal meeting draws to a close right here on the Guardian’s live blog.
