ASCOT’S new grandstand succumbs only to Wayne Rooney’s metatarsal in a count of column inches. Rightly so: a quintessentially British event today resumes its place at the heart of the summer, and within its rightful home.
Yet Ascot’s dramatic transformation has overshadowed the more discreet evolvement of a fixture envied worldwide for the wealth of its racing. See the new paddock, ride new escalators, frequent new bars all you like. The best of it will happen out on the track.
The most striking changes to the racing programme reflect the changing nature of racing itself. In prize-money terms, the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes and the Golden Jubilee Stakes share top billing at £350,000. Seven years ago, the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes was a humble servant of the Coronation Stakes. It is now a championship race over ten furlongs, the distance at which prize thoroughbreds tend to compete.
Meanwhile, the metamorphosis of the Golden Jubilee Stakes has rendered it beyond recognition. A group three prize of no significance at the turn of the century, it now entices sprinters of international repute.
Royal Ascot has also gained significantly from the new racing programme for older fillies and mares. The Windsor Forest Stakes, a group two prize, has drawn a pair of plums in Echelon and Soviet Song. Neither would be in training but for this development.
Advertisement
In a perfect world, Soviet Song would be tilting against colts in the Queen Anne Stakes, yet races like the Windsor Forest are what tempt connections into keeping mares in training. They need opportunities to compete against their own sex from time to time.
When on song, older fillies and mares are not averse to taking on colts. Peeress does just that in the Queen Anne today. Likewise, Ouija Board in tomorrow’s Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, and Shawanda in Saturday’s Hardwicke Stakes.
Welcome as these developments are, however, they have not overshadowed Ascot’s traditional highlights. The mile races for three-year-olds bestow champion status — in particular the Coronation Stakes on Friday, which brings together Speciosa and Nightime, the 1,000 Guineas winners of Britain and Ireland, and Price Tag, the winner on merit in France.
Most refreshingly, the Gold Cup is still the gem of the week. No race examines horses like the Gold Cup, with its profuse demands on stamina and courage. Unlike the Cheltenham Festival, where the Gold Cup has usurped the National Hunt Chase, the Ascot Gold Cup, run over 2½ miles, retains its original prominence.
The strength of recent Gold Cups prompts some to belittle this year’s renewal as below par. That assertion is contentious. Lining up on Thursday are Distinction, narrowly denied by the outstanding Westerner last year; Sergeant Cecil, the hope of incurable romantics; French champion Reefscape; Coronation Cup winner Yeats and Melbourne Cup winner Media Puzzle. That’s hardly below par.
Advertisement
Indeed, this year’s Gold Cup is far more beguiling than those of the 1980s, a decade that closed to persistent calls for the race to be shorn in distance to two miles. Those calls fell on deaf ears: the Gold Cup distance is nothing less than its defining feature. Its magnetism in the face of rapid change is sustained by its uniqueness.
The drawback in extending a four-day meeting to five is an inevitable dilution of the racing standard. Like Cheltenham, Royal Ascot has suffered in this respect. Against that, Ascot has contrived an important shift in emphasis while simultaneously nourishing tradition. The new stand will be a resounding success if the same can be said of it five years hence.