If you're a horseplayer with a bucket list, at the top of it should be a visit to Royal Ascot. It's the greatest show on turf, five days of world-class racing with as much partying and horse racing gambling as you can handle. Since 1711, it's been a mid-June extravaganza on Ascot Heath, 25 miles west of London. Now that’s tradition, and it’s back on Tuesday.
This five-day midsummer dream is the world's greatest race meeting, featuring the royal family, high fashion, and rivers of alcohol. The betting action is nonstop, featuring 35 races, including 19 graded stakes, eight of them Group 1. Europe's best trainers and jockeys will compete before capacity crowds at a magnificent facility.
Hall of Famer Steve Cauthen, who won the 1978 Triple Crown on Affirmed, was Royal Ascot's leading jockey four times before retiring in 1992. Now 66, he has fond memories of those glory days.
“Financially, winning a Kentucky Derby is more important, but other than that, there's no place where a victory feels more special than at Royal Ascot,” he said many years ago. “You win there with all the pageantry, and you feel like you're at center stage with the whole world looking on. It's an extremely tough meeting, but I loved riding there.”
The fields are huge, with sometimes as many as 32 horses thundering down a pristine ribbon of grass. The meet showcases 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, and older horses at distances ranging from 5 furlongs to 2 3/4 miles.
As usual, the Queen Anne Stakes (G1), at a mile for 4-year-olds and up, is the first race on opening day (post time 9:30 a.m. ET). It's a Breeders' Cup Challenge Series “Win, and You're In” qualifier for the Mile (G1) on Oct. 31 at Keeneland. Since the series began in 2007, only the incomparable mare Goldikova swept both races. In 2010, she won her third consecutive Mile four and a half months after taking the Queen Anne.
Two races later, the attraction is the 5-furlong King Charles III Stakes (G1), which offers the winner a spot in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint (G1).
The past five Queen Anne winners skipped the Mile, but maybe that streak will end this year. Among the leading contenders are the Godolphin runners Notable Speech, the 8-5 favorite, and Opera Ballo (4-1), trained by Charlie Appleby. More Thunder (5-1) and last year’s longshot winner, Docklands (6-1), also deserve a look.
The 5-year-old Notable Speech has five Grade 1 wins, including the 2025 Breeders’ Cup Mile and the recent Lockinge Stakes at Newbury. He’s 6-for-18 lifetime and 0-for-2 at Ascot after finishing fourth in last year’s Queen Anne.
“We were unlucky in the Queen Anne last year,” Appleby said. “I’m feeling good now, knowing what we’ve learned about Notable Speech. There aren’t too many horses who can quicken like him.”
Opera Ballo is an improving 4-year-old with a 6-for-8 record that includes five stakes wins. He comes in after surprising even-money favorite Field of Gold in the Bet365 Mile (G3) at Sandown Park. He led all the way there, a change of tactics from his off-the-pace style.
“He looks quicker than he was,” Appleby said, “and he’s beaten the best milers in England. So why take him out of that division?”
Docklands is only 5-for-24 and lost six of seven since his 14-1 Queen Anne shocker. More Thunder and Zeus Olympios were second and third, respectively, behind Notable Speech in the Lockinge.
Ed McNamara is an award-winning racing writer who has covered the sport since 1981 for The Bergen (N.J.) Record, Newsday, ESPN, Thorocap, and USRacing. He is the author of Cajun Racing: From the Bush Tracks to the Triple Crown and Racing Around the World, and a contributor to The Most Glorious Crown and The Racetracks of America. He has also written for racing publications in France and Italy.
