REFLECTIONS ON ROYAL ASCOT.

​Let’s start by stating the bloody obvious: Royal Ascot is unique. You could travel the globe eastward or westward for all of your adult life in search of a similar sporting and social occasion and end your days fulfilled for the adventure yet sadly lacking in achievement. Those who first went in search of the source of the Nile probably felt similarly deflated. Royal Ascot is a firework of brilliance sealed with royal approval. U.S., Australia, Hong Kong, eat your heart out.
It is a bewildering mix of history, pageantry, catwalk glamour, social exclusivity, old-fashioned style and etiquette, holiday fever and high stakes but most of all it is five days when mere commoners, workers-in-the-field, labourers, the underlings of society, can join their adored and respected monarch in celebration of horse racing at its finest. The ballyhoo of Royal Ascot maybe absurd yet it is equally truly wonderful. It is the United Kingdom (oh how I wish the kingdom was united) at its very best.
Having said all that, it’s the one race meeting I have no ambition to attend. Mainly for most of the above, though mainly because I believe it is a cruelty, bordering on a human rights issue, to force a man to wear ‘morning-attire’ –if that is the correct term – just to be allowed to watch an outdoor sport. Top hat and tails are for Fred Astaire – a great racing fan in his lifetime –Gene Kelly and Busby Berkley, not for someone of my sensitivities and signature fashion sense. Of course, Royal Ascot is one of those occasions when the female has it better than the male, able as they are to glam up and wear, within the strict dress code, whatever that suits their fancy. Men are allowed no option but to parade around with the jaded aplomb of an unfinished embalmed ostrich, their sweat, and it is the sweat of the agricultural fieldsman, not the demure perspiration of the loose-clothed ladies, as omnipresent as the aroma of formaldehyde, mothballs and heavy-duty cologne. I felt so sorry for the I.T.V. chaps having to smile through the discomfort, their marmalade or salmon sandwiches wilting under their ridiculous top-hats.
Would not have it any other way, though. To change Royal Ascot one iota would equate to demolishing St. Paul’s Cathedral or the Pelican Fish’N’Chip restaurant in Barnstaple that is officially the best of its kind in Britain.
Oh, there is horse racing as well.
Pallasator winning the Queen Alexandra was my favourite moment. How Gordon Elliott has transformed the old monkey from a raging torrent of wild water to a swan on a tranquil stream needs both explanation and an award. I’ve made this comment before but it bears repetition: why are there awards for riding performances but none for trainers who achieve great achievements. Of course, Pallasator could not go quietly into the evening; he had to remind us that deep within his psyche he remains the Pallasator of old by ducking away from an invisible monster only he could see, no doubt to remind the mercurial and brilliant Jamie Spencer who the big name was in the partnership. Pallasator and Spencer, not the other way around.
Cracksman losing is a better narrative for the summer than Cracksman winning on the bridle and frightening away the opposition for the King George and Queen Elisabeth, if he should go there. Of course, Messrs Gosden and Oppenheimer are now on the horns of a dilemma: do they risk running Cracksman again and further devaluing him as a stallion or do they crack on and hope for some rain to fall in July? Or perhaps wait for the Arc? Personally, I don’t think we will see Cracksman on a racecourse again. Blinkers seem the obvious way forward but that will suggest to breeders that as he got older Cracksman became as reliable as Pallasator. In Oppenheimer’s favour is that John Gosden is not only a great trainer but a wise council. I hope for Frankie’s sake Enable shakes off her injury and can be trained for the Arc.
I see Hunting Horn is being touted as the St.Leger winner in waiting, though I believe Southern France is the Ballydoyle horse to be thinking of come September. It is impossible not to like and admire Aidan O’Brien but his ability to answer a question at length without actually giving away anything definitive is as subtly devious as Penn and Teller or any politician. To the question of where Hunting Horn would go next he suggested he might stay at 10-furlongs, go up in trip, run in the Irish Derby, be kept for the St.Leger or given a break. And the interviewer seemed to think he had achieved a scoop! If only Aidan had suggested he might be trained for the Triumph Hurdle or the Newmarket Town Plate!
Royal Ascot is excellence in abundance. It is not the Olympics of racing, as Frankie keeps referring to it. The Olympics is every four years. Royal Ascot is an annual event. Anyway, Royal Ascot is better than the Olympics. It has both silly and beautiful clothes and a pageant, though I dare say pedants will claim the Olympic opening ceremony is a pageant. It is, though, slowly but surely, becoming something akin to a world championship on turf, with top-class horses now coming from America and Australia to add flavour, interest and well-deserved compliments for a job well-done.