A moment that would, in normal times, have set Royal Ascot alight in celebration unfolded in near-silence on Wednesday, as Tactical landed the Windsor Castle Stakes in the Queen’s famous scarlet and purple colours while his delighted owner was forced to celebrate seven miles away at, appropriately enough, Windsor Castle itself.
“I suspect deep down there might have been a tinge of disappointment that she’s not there,” John Warren, the Queen’s racing manager, said afterwards, “but it was completely over-ridden by the fact that she’d actually had the winner.”
It was a rewarding moment for many racing fans too, as Tactical, the Queen’s 24th winner at the Royal meeting, was heavily backed beforehand and set off as the 7-2 favourite in a field of 18 runners which included seven previous winners, despite having finished only third in his only previous start.
James Doyle, his jockey, rode a confident race close to the stands’ rail and Tactical came home a comfortable winner by a length-and-a-quarter. Tactical was the Queen’s first winner at the meeting since 2016, and followed a near-miss earlier in the day with her three-year-old colt First Receiver, who finished a half-length second to Russian Emperor in the Hampton Court Stakes.
“It’s obviously a great shame that her Majesty’s not there to be able to go down and enjoy the whole buzz of her runners,” Warren said, “but she’s studied every bit of it today, watching the races, and the last two days, she’s been able to spend a bit of time watching the most important races, so this was the icing on the cake to actually have a winner.
“Every day of her life, she follows racing one way or another when she can, so she would have read the Racing Post in great detail and built up to this week, and known very well the important fancied horses. When she watches the racing, she’s fully up to date with the horses’ backgrounds, who trains them, who’s riding them and a lot about the horses and the way they’re bred, because that’s her great passion, the breeding.”
Tactical was also the Queen’s first home-bred Royal Ascot winner since Free Agent in the Chesham Stakes in 2008, adding to the satisfaction of victory.
“Andrew [Balding, Tactical’s trainer] had been saying since the spring that the horse was naturally precocious and had been finding his work terribly easy,” Warren said, “so it looked as though he was a nice prospect.
“Every mare that retires to stud, there’s significant consideration on how she is to be mated and how the resulting foals are to be reared and developed. [The stud managers] keep the Queen very informed, more so with photography recently because she’s been unable to go and see the stock. She even watches them being born on the iPad if it’s the right time of the evening.
“Breeding one and following it through all its issues and humps and bumps in the road [means] she’ll get special enjoyment out of breeding this.”
For Doyle, the royal winner completed a fine day’s work after steering John Gosden’s Lord North to an emphatic success in the Group One Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the feature race on the meeting’s second afternoon.
Lord North was beaten into second place in an Ascot handicap off a mark of 98 last September, but his progress since winning the Cambridgeshire Handicap on his next start has been relentless and having won a Group Three at Haydock on 7 June, he has now added a Group One win just 10 days later.
He is, however, a gelding and so unable to emulate Halling, a previous Gosden-trained Cambridgeshire winner who went on to Group One success, by moving on to a stud career.
“He needed to be gelded [in spring 2019],” Gosden said, “he was tormenting himself. Testosterone is the most dangerous drug in the world and he is a lovely horse to be around now. He has got better and better. He’s very powerful and for a gelding, he has a great body to him. He’s had two hard races so we’ll freshen him up and then make decisions.”
Japan, last year’s International Stakes winner, was a disappointing favourite for the Prince of Wales’s Stakes after making a slow start, but Aidan O’Brien, his trainer, finished the day with a potential Derby colt thanks to Russian Emperor’s success. The son of Galileo is now a 12-1 shot for the Epsom Classic on 4 July.
