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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)
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.
