The joy of Royal Ascot

In a disintegrating country, stuck for the moment with a Prime Minister who can’t see the difference between a proliferation of photo-ops and the act of governing, we needed a Royal Ascot week. No racecourse in the world does photo-ops better than Ascot – the carriage processions, the toppers and tails (and yes, Madam, wear what appears to be a pair of mating macaws on your titfer if that is what rocks your boat), the bandstand singsongs. But at Ascot they know that the show counts for nothing without the substance and in its enthusiastic embrace of internationalism (another contrast with Downing Street) Ascot delivers, bringing top-class contestants from the United States, Australia, Japan, France and Germany to vie with Britain’s best.

Typical was the Queen Mary Stakes. America’s Wesley Ward has had eight juvenile winners at Royal Ascot and collected four Queen Marys. He told everyone how confident he was that his Golden Pal would win, but Yorkshire’s Karl Burke, opposing him with Dramatised, declared: ‘I’ll take my hat off to him if he can beat Dramatised – in fact, I’ll give him my hat.’ In the end, no handover of head wear was required: Dramatised won handsomely and Ward proved that Americans, too, can be good losers with the wry comment: ‘Some days it’s chicken, some days it’s feathers.’

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Brendan O’Neill

The moment in the ‘grooming gangs’ debate that shamed Jess Phillips

The week was about jockeyship as much as equine athleticism and sometimes it can be as hard for riders to acclimatise as it can be for horses. Wesley Ward had brought over the US star Irad Ortiz to ride Golden Pal. I noted Ortiz before the race, constantly twitching in the saddle as if dissatisfied with his gear. He was then caught napping as the stalls opened because he hadn’t realised that horses in Britain only get so many attempts to enter the stalls and his eye was on a horse who had been excluded thinking he was yet to load.