A Big Book Of Rides On The Royal Heath
Day two of Royal Ascot is built for a jockey like Ryan Moore. The Queen Mary, the Queen’s Vase, the Duke of Cambridge, a Group 1 in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the Royal Hunt Cup, the Kensington Palace Stakes and the Windsor Castle Stakes all went to post on Wednesday, and Moore had rides scattered through most of them — the bulk of them in the green-and-blue of Ballydoyle, in the saddle for Aidan O’Brien.
It is one of the sport’s enduring partnerships. O’Brien has spent the best part of two decades sending out Royal Ascot winners by the dozen, and Moore has been in the plate for a huge share of them, the trusted hand who gets the leg-up on the yard’s better-fancied colts and fillies whenever the meeting that matters most comes around. Wednesday’s book — Minnie Hauk in the Prince of Wales’s, Port of Spain in the Queen’s Vase, Sergei Diaghilev in the Windsor Castle, and a spare ride for James Owen aboard Radiant Beauty in the Kensington Palace — was a reminder of just how often this rider’s name appears on an Ascot card in June.
Victorious Delivers The Headline
The highlight came early, in the Queen Mary Stakes — the meeting’s first proper test for the new generation of two-year-old fillies, and a race with history behind it. It has been run at Ascot since 1921, named for the queen consort of King George V, and lifted to Group 2 company back in 2004; over the years it has built a reputation as the form race for the season’s fastest juvenile fillies.
Victorious arrived unbeaten in two starts and left the same way. O’Brien’s filly was settled by Moore through the early stages of the five-furlong dash before being asked the question approaching the furlong pole, finding another gear and drawing clear for a clear-cut win over Senorita Bonita. It was the kind of performance that explains why the placings sheet at a Group race so often reads like a Ballydoyle roll call — and why, for O’Brien and Moore, Royal Ascot has become something close to an annual rite.
Moore’s afternoon wasn’t a one-horse story, either. Minnie Hauk kept the book ticking over with a solid second in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the meeting’s middle-distance Group 1, giving connections plenty to work with again before the week was out.
The Rest Of The Card, Around The Country
Royal Ascot dominates the racing world’s attention in mid-June, but it wasn’t the only show in town on Wednesday. Up at Hamilton, jockey Oisin Orr had a fine afternoon for the Richard & Pat Fahey stable, winning aboard Emperor’s Son and following up with a podium finish on stablemate Tarmonbarry Kid. Ripon’s smaller northern card produced two home winners of its own in Grasmere Boy and Eloquencia, while down at Worcester the small Bowen training operation saddled Off The Jury to victory under Sean Dylan Bowen — a nice reminder that there’s a winner’s enclosure moment worth having at every track on the circuit, not just the Royal one. Ffos Las, meanwhile, ran its card on testing soft ground in south Wales, the kind of conditions that separate the genuine stayers from the rest as the summer jumps season ticks along.
If you’re following the rest of Royal Ascot week, the full racecard and form guide is at cfox.co.za/predictions-uk.
