The Royal Ascot meeting traditionally kicks off with this Group 1 race on the Tuesday and is often won by a truly exceptional racehorse. Baaed won it last year while Frankel also won the race.

16 of the last 20 winners of this race had already won a Group 1 contest in their career, while 23 4-year-olds have won in the last 30 years.

Team Godolphin targets this race for their best older milers and have won it an incredible 8 times.

Legendary Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien has seen some of his top older horses lose here despite being among the favourites to win, while many of his less well-known horses have been successful. The likes of Hawk Wing, George Washington, and Rip Van Winkle were all defeated while Circus Maximus, Ad Valorem, Declaration of War were all successful.

The Lockinge stakes run at Newbury in April is always a good trial for this race with 24 winners of the Queen Anne since 1980 having participated in that contest before winning at Royal Ascot; in fact, the last two winners of the Queen Anne won the Lockinge.

This season Team Godolphin’s Modern Games aims to continue that trend having won the Newbury race ahead of Unibet ambassador Richard Hannon’s Chindit.

Inspiral, trained by John Gosden and ridden by Frankie Dettori, makes her seasonal debut in the race. The stats don’t stack up for those horses making their seasonal debuts in this race, but supporters of Inspiral will draw plenty of confidence from the fact she won at last year’s Royal Ascot (Group 1 Coronation Stakes) having had 252 days off the track prior to running that day.

Finally, a very strong trend worth noting is that this race is rarely won by an unfancied horse. Since 1995 just 3 winners were not in the first four in the betting.

The Royal Hunt Cup is one of the biggest flat racing handicaps of the entire year and is quite a spectacle as 30 horses race from across the breadth of the one mile Ascot straight in order to win connections close on £160,000 but more importantly to be added to the pantheon of horses who have won this race since 1843.

The first time the race was run over one mile though was in 1956 and it is traditionally the first big handicap of the Royal Ascot meeting, and the only one which has a perpetual trophy; in fact it is only one of three perpetual trophies at the meeting, along with the Gold Cup and the Queen’s Vase.
12 four year olds have won the race since 2007, while a number of trainers have won the race a couple of times in recent seasons.

John Gosden, Saeed bin Suroor, Charles Hills and James Fanshawe have all won the race twice.

In the last 20 years, the leading jockey in the Royal Hunt Cup is James Doyle who has won the race two times with Belgian Bill in 2013 and Portage in 2016, while he has been placed a further four times!

Ascot’s Gold Cup is one of the most iconic races in the English racing calendar. The Group 1 race is open to horses aged four years or older and is run over the marathon trip of 2 miles 4 furlongs.

It’s been a race in which to side with the favourites, or at least those towards the front end of the betting market, in recent years as 16 of the last 17 winners have been no bigger than 7/1.

The Irish have won 9 of the last 17 Gold Cups – with trainer Aidan O’Brien having won 8 of those.

Those horses who had previously won the Queen’s Vase at the Royal Meeting do well – three Queen’s Vase winners have gone onto win this race since 2012. This year Eldar Eldarov aims to continue this trend.

Roger Varian’s improving four-year-old followed up his Queen’s Vase victory by winning the St Leger and made a pleasing introduction this season when 2nd over an inadequate 14 furlongs in the Yorkshire Cup giving weight away.

Coltrane won the Doncaster Cup and Sagaro Stakes (over course) and is one of just a very few in the field who has won over such an extreme test of stamina as the Gold Cup having won the Ascot Stakes at last year’s Royal meeting. His Ascot form is 211 and according to his ratings, is still improving.

Aidan O’Brien’s Emily Dickinson will try to become the first mare to win the race since Estimate in 2021. Mares have a poor record in the race though; prior to Estimate you have to go back to Indian Queen in 1991 for a previous female winner.

This race is a relatively new one to the Royal Ascot rostrum having only been run since 2015. It is for three-year-olds only over 6 furlongs.

In this time the race has been won on six occasions by horses rated between 114 to 119 while it has also been the next aim of horses that didn’t stay the mile in the 2000 Guineas.

Some exceptional sprinters have won this race; the very first race in 2015 saw Muhaarar beat Limato while in 2017 Caravaggio beat Harry Point and Blue Point.

Little Big Bear fits two of most important trends for this race in that he didn’t seem to stay the mile in the 2000 Guineas, and is rated highly – was already 124 as Champion 2-year-old last season. He has also won over the course.

The newly named Group 1 Platinum Jubilee Stakes is worth a whopping £1 million to the winner.

Run over six furlongs, it attracts some of the world’s finest sprinters. It’s also the sixth leg of the Global Sprint Challenge, providing a fitting close to a sensational week.