It’s time to scuttle under a rock if you are a Folkestone or Cornish crab: 7,000 of them will be consumed in Royal Ascot week, along with 2,900 lobsters, 160,000 glasses of Pimm’s, 51,000 bottles of champagne and 30,000 chocolate eclairs. Better get your chopper booking in fast, too: 400 helicopters will descend on to the Berkshire course during the week.
In purely racing terms, Royal Ascot isn’t quite yet a Dubai with rhododendrons. Invitational events like Sheikh Mohammed’s World Cup in March and the Hong Kong International race day in December pull in more worldwide equine stars, and Ascot doesn’t have a centrepiece race like the Derby, Grand National or Cheltenham Gold Cup. It does have 18 Group Races, eight of them Group Ones, strongly supporting its claim to be the best race meeting in Europe, and every year it becomes more international. This year 164 entries were received from eight countries for the eight Group Ones and Ascot’s mix of pageantry, fashion and top-class racing merits TV coverage in 200 countries. From next year Royal Ascot will be broadcast daily on NBC in America.
Ascot also stages the Shergar Cup in August, featuring team contests between the world’s best jockeys. Before her accident at the end of May, the planners were hoping this year to include Michelle Payne, the first woman to win the Melbourne Cup. At Royal Ascot they have high hopes that this year’s opening-day Queen Anne Stakes will feature the flying mare Tepin. The winner of her past six races, she is currently the highest–profile horse in America. On the second day we could see A Shin Hikari from Japan, an impressive winner in Hong Kong in December, in the Prince of Wales Stakes.
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