Nothing pleases the Royal Ascot crowd more than a winner for the meeting’s crucial supporter, the Queen. Imagine, then, the dilemma of one of her Windsor Castle lunch guests, trainer Roger Charlton, when Her Majesty asked him, ‘Are you going to beat me?’ on the day of the Tercentenary Stakes. Charlton is one of the six Flat trainers with whom she has horses, but in that race his entry was Times Test, whom he trains for Khalid Abdullah, and Her Majesty’s runner was Peacock, trained by Richard Hannon. Charlton didn’t know how to answer and just hoped for a dead heat. After Times Test had run out one of the most impressive winners of the week, beating Peacock by three-and-a-quarter lengths, he reflected, ‘I don’t think I’ll get lunch again.’ A vote among the crowd would probably have had him incarcerated in the Tower.
It wasn’t a happy week for the Queen, always the most sporting of owners: her Touchline messed up the start in the Sandringham Handicap and endured considerable traffic problems before finishing third and her Capel Path was injured in the Britannia Handicap and taken to the Newmarket equine hospital.
Ascot is often about owners and trainers but this year Britain’s international racing festival was all about the jockeys.
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