May and June are fantastic times of year for flat racing punters, and perhaps the jewel in the crown is the Royal Ascot festival which will run for five action-packed days from Tuesday June 14 to Saturday June 18.
It is the most valuable race meeting in the UK in terms of prize money (nearly £7 million to be precise), and so you can expect a healthy showing from some of the planet’s finest sprinters and stayers in the eight Group One races on the card.
Royal by name, royal by nature: the Queen will continue her seemingly endless 90th birthday celebrations at the event, with the Gold Cup renamed in her honour, and she might even be hoping for a few winners from her yard to help bulk up her bank balance.
Royal Ascot Betting Tips
The festival kicks off with a bang on Tuesday with a trio of Group One encounters, the pick of which are the Queen Anne Stakes and the St James’ Palace Stakes. In the former look out for Tepin, a prolific winner in the United States, will battle it out with Belardo for honours. The Irish horse was impressive in taking the Lockinge Stakes, and looks a tad underpriced at 6/1 with Betfair.
In the St James’ Palace Stakes your card has been marked by top jockey Ryan Moore, who says his mount The Gurkha offers his best chance of an Ascot winner. At 13/8 with Coral, that’s good enough for us.
The feature of Wednesday’s card is another royal affair, the Prince of Wales Stakes, with a Japanese sensation A Shin Hikari taking favouritism. He won as a 25/1 hope on debut in December, although travel fatigue could be a factor. If it is, Aiden O’Brien’s Found looks ready to take advantage at 7/1 with William Hill.
Royal Ascot Betting Preview
Thursday is Ladies Day and Gold Cup day too, where Order of St George looks an almost unstoppable force and at a reasonable 5/4 with Betfred too.
A brace of Group One renewals greet us on the Friday, with the Coronation Stakes looking as hotly contested as ever. This race brings together the best three-year-old fillies on the continent, so competition should be fierce. Ballydoyle is the ante post favourite, and will be looking to add to the O’Brien-Magnier stable of winners, as will Minding – a real star in the making and worthy of every penny of her 5/1 price with SkyBet.
The curtain falls on Royal Ascot with another packed card on Saturday, the highlight of which is the Diamond Jubilee Stakes. This is the second leg of the Global Sprint Challenge, and with five of the field under the 10/1 mark, the bookmakers are clearly hedging their bets. But at 6/1 with bet365, we’ve got a really impressive favourite on our hands in Magical Memory. A Group Two winner already this term, the four-year-old scooped last year’s Stewards Cup in an outstanding showing. At the price, Magical Memory is perhaps the bet of the week.
