ombudsmam, economics & ascot gold cup.

​At just shy of £600,000, the Prince of Wales’s Stakes is the richest race at Royal Ascot. In recent years it has acquired a boost in prize-money, if not a boost in the standard and quantity of runners. I would argue yesterday’s race was hardly value for money. I am not knocking the winner as I thought him the most impressive winner of the meeting so far. Yes, slightly more impressive than Field of Gold, who might no not be the best horse in Europe after-all. I would suggest, even if it is fair repost to say that every race will wander in quality from year to year, that for £600,000 first prize money you would have thought every top or thought-to-be class 10-furlong horse would be in the line-up.
Given the now accepted need to put greater emphasis on stamina over speed, I would have thought the extra funding for the Prince of Wales’s Stakes would be of more use to the industry if it had gone to the Hardwicke Stakes, which as it is at present only a Group 2 maybe does not qualify for the value boost, and even if it should in future be worth the same amount to the winner as the Prince of Wales’s Stakes would not necessarily guarantee it favour with the European Pattern Committee that rubber-stamps such upgrades. But the Hardwicke is where I would have preferred the money to have gone, then we would have a middle-distance triple crown of the Coronation Cup, Hardwicke, King George & Queen Elisabeth Stakes.
There is another race at Royal Ascot far more worthy of being the most valuable and I will come to that in a moment.

But first I want to ask if anyone remembers Economics and the hyperbole that surrounded him the last season? As is usually the case when a young horse impresses early in its 3-year-old career, the racing media went a bit balmy, suggesting the idea that this horse was truly the second-coming of Pegasus and if not Pegasus, then Eclipse.
As a born cynic, I was not at any stage last season as impressed as everyone else and was not in the least surprised when he crashed and burned in the Champion Stakes, even if the soft ground was against him. He has not run since, though if injury had not intervened, he would have contested the Prince of Wales’ s Stakes yesterday. To me, he looks one of those horses who is stalked by the fate of ‘if it can go wrong, it will go wrong’. That said, I hope it stops going wrong long enough for William Haggas to get him back to the racecourse, if only to give some opposition to John Gosden in all the 10-furlong Group 1’s this season.
Oh, there is a very good reason why Ombudsman might swerve both the Eclipse and the Juddmonte International and that is Godolphin has Ruling Court lined-up for both those races, and Juddmonte will be very keen to preserve Field of Gold’s image of supremacy, especially in a race they sponsor. It is all about the stallion barn, remember, when it comes to the flat. Even Coolmore seem to have adopted a policy this season of keeping their very best horses apart, perhaps for the same reason. It is only about the sport for a short while for the big breeders, with priority given to where the real money can be made, and that is not between the white rails but back at the stud farm.

The race at Royal Ascot with the longest history and for the greatest amount of time during that history, the greatest prestige, is the Ascot Gold Cup and for that reason alone it should be the most valuable race of the week.
For breeders to take the concept of stamina above speed with serious intent, the long-distance races must be greater valued than they have become. Once upon a time, and the hackneyed expression is relevant here as we are quickly accelerating from those halcyon, almost mythical days, when stamina was worshiped and sprint races were almost an irrelevance, Derby winners gained in prestige if they went on to win the Ascot Gold Cup as 4-year-olds. 
Ascot and the sport in general are doing the thoroughbred breed a disservice by allowing the Gold Cup to drift into the waters of novelty, a more valuable yet only a smidgen more prestigious than the Queen Alexandria Stakes, a race that only remains as a part of the Royal meeting due to public protest. If a 10-furlong race can be valued at £600,000, surely a race with a history as glorious as the Ascot Gold Cup should be valued at a £1-million.