It was a Royal Ascot that had everything except a crowd: a performance for the ages from Stradivarius in the Gold Cup, a winner for the Queen, the biggest winning SP in the meeting’s history and a final-day flourish from Frankie Dettori to retain the prize for the week’s top jockey.
Those are just the most obvious headlines that come to mind at the end of five days that took place with unprecedented restrictions to ensure the safety of all participants amid the Covid-19 pandemic, but there were many more.
Hollie Doyle, Tom Marquand and Kevin Stott – who had a double including a Group One on Saturday – were among half a dozen jockeys to break their Royal Ascot ducks. Alan King, better known as a jumps trainer, had three winners while the combined might of Charlie Appleby and Saeed bin Suroor, Godolphin’s principal trainers in Newmarket, drew blanks.
Jim Crowley, meanwhile, rode six Royal Ascot winners in five days, doubling his career total, and still finished second. Dettori, who will be 50 in December, finished the meeting tied with the late Pat Eddery on 73 Royal Ascot winners, second only to Lester Piggott.
And while there were no paying spectators in the grandstand or splashing out on champagne in a hospitality marquee, the action unfolded in front of the largest TV audience for Royal Ascot since the BBC lost the rights to the meeting eight years ago. The highest number of the week – 1.8 million for Hayley Turner’s win on Onassis in the Sandringham Handicap – was surely inflated by viewers tuning in for The Chase, but 1.5 million watched Dettori win on Stradivarius earlier the same afternoon and the average audience was an eight-year high on all five days.
Digging a little deeper, six extra handicaps were added to the meeting in an attempt to boost betting turnover and profits, making a total of 13. Only two were won by the favourite, while the Wokingham and Silver Wokingham on Saturday, the biggest day of the week betting-wise, had winners at 18-1 and 20-1. And 499 rides at the most competitive meeting of the season resulted in only five whip bans, all for minor breaches.
For racing as a whole it was also hugely important to get Royal Ascot completed in its traditional slot in mid-June. In a normal year, it can a feel a little odd to have four Classics and the most famous meeting of the season already in the form book, little more than two months into the campaign. Only now, when it is necessary to squeeze three months of racing into five weeks, is Ascot’s role as a fulcrum for what goes both before and after fully apparent.
Thirsk 12.15 Alghada 12.45 Ginger Max 1.15 Right Action
1.50 Garnock Valley 2.20 Mythical Madness 2.50 Queen Mia
3.20 Gabrial The One 3.50 A Star Above 4.25 Arrow Of Gold
4.55 Robeam
Ayr 1.40 Meshakel 2.10 Volatile Analyst 2.40 Lincoln Red 3.10 Be Proud 3.40 Lord Riddiford 4.15 Que Amoro 4.50 Mischief Star 5.20 Tadleel 5.50 Oasis Prince
Windsor 5.00 Breakfast Club 5.30 Lady Florence 6.00 Imperial Fora 6.30 The Lamplighter (nb) 7.00 Our Man In Havana 7.30 Naked Lass 8.00 Fahad (nap) 8.30 Tralee Hills
Assuming the Derby and Oaks go ahead as planned on 4 July, the British Horseracing Authority will have achieved the impressive feat of getting a Flat season which was locked down and in limbo along with the rest of the country in mid-April back on to something like an even keel. The Eclipse, on 5 July, will not be an option for the Derby winner this year, but the cycle of major festival meetings – July at Newmarket, Glorious Goodwood, the Ebor meeting at York and the Leger Festival at Doncaster – is set to unfold as normal.
The problem, of course, is that it is still far from normal. Royal Ascot was the first major event in any British sport since the lockdown started and it was a roaring success in every way – apart from the one where it was always going to fail. The prize funds were cut in half, some betting shops in England were open and making media-rights payments, and the TV audiences – which correlate strongly with betting turnover – were excellent. But without tens of millions of pounds in ticket sales and hospitality revenue, the bottom line was still unsustainably bleak.
The financials will be just as alarming at other big meetings until spectators are allowed to return. “Royal Ascot at home”, as it was rebranded, proved beyond doubt it is possible to stage the Flat season’s biggest meeting without the Queen, with physical distancing and behind closed doors. We can only hope it is never necessary to do so again.
