what i would like delivered from royal ascot 2021.

​Royal Ascot is the only flat meeting, in my prejudiced opinion, that even comes close to pushing the Cheltenham Festival for the title of ‘best meeting in the world’. It is also the only flat meeting that I enjoy from race 1 on day 1 to the last race on the final day. It is a compendium of horse racing in this country, with races from 5-furlong to 2-miles 5-furlongs, with every distance in between catered for. Group 1’s, 2’s and 3’s plus some of the most competitive handicaps you could ever find in any part of the globe. In fact, I would go so far to say that the handicaps at Royal Ascot not only rival the Cheltenham Festival handicaps but out-do them, with the Royal Hunt Cup one of my favourite flat races of the whole season. If I live long enough I hope to one year actually tip the winner.
What bugs me about Royal Ascot, mistakenly referred to by some as ‘the Olympics of horse racing’, which is plainly a misleading comparison, is that no champions are crowned throughout the week, with the possible exception of the Ascot Gold Cup, though come the end of October, after the Goodwood and Doncaster Cups and Champions Day, the winner at Ascot may become usurped as champion stayer in the end-of-year official ratings. Though that may be true over the jumps as well.
Yet it is true to say that the two big Grade I sprints, as well as the Commonwealth Cup, are just stepping stones and not ends in themselves, with plenty of Grade 1 sprints throughout the rest of the season. In fact, all the Group 1’s at Royal Ascot, prizes in themselves prestigious and well worth winning, are also but stepping stones on a journey towards other Group 1’s later in the season.
But all gripes aside, Royal Ascot is a festival of brilliance, though I think, albeit that more normal people than myself take pride in dressing up in clothes completely at odds with an outdoor sporting event, the top-hat, tails and fancy frills are as archaic as gaslighting and the workhouse. I just wish Royal Ascot was solely about the horses and the racing. But then I have no pretensions to high society and the summer season. I am a man of mid-winter, early spring and rough workman’s clothes.
What I would dearly like to happen this year at Ascot is that Nicola Currie rides a winner. She’s as neat a rider as you will find, tidy and strong in a finish and with the sort of  sparky and sparkling personality that the wider public would take to. As I have always said, the difference between her beau Sam Twiston-Davies and Nicola is that Sam is not under-rated. Now she is free of being Jamie Osborne’s stable jockey, with daughter Saffie now getting the baulk of the rides from her father, Nicola has had to put herself about a bit and has come up trumps with George Boughey, Newmarket’s new man on the block. He has given her opportunities and she has taken them with both hands. I hope the association blossoms still further this week.
I also would like to see rain from mid-week onwards, or at least prior to the Gold Cup as otherwise Trueshan will not be running. Flat racing, though many will not either acknowledge or appreciate it, needs a female rider to win one of the major races that remains known to the sporting world and public at large. I’m not convinced Trueshan can lower the colours of Stradivarius and I believe Coolmore have thought all-the-while that Serpentine was a possible Gold Cup horse, so I am not full of expectation of Hollie Doyle winning the race but the Ascot Gold Cup is the only race at Royal Ascot that shines a light outside of the sport. She could win the Cork and Orrery or the Queen Mary and no one will bat an eyelid but to win the Ascot Gold Cup will get her and the sport on the front pages of the national papers, which is why I hope Trueshan can out-gallop the opposition. But he needs rain, and plenty of it, just to take part.
The other hope I have for Royal Ascot 2021 is that the Irish have a poor week. Not gracious, I know, but British trainers need a strong meeting, with all the top prizes staying in this country. Another drubbing and I can see owners de-camping to Ireland, convinced it is the only way to make money at the game. And I particularly do not want Willie Mullins going home with a bagful of pots to his name. He is already a National Hunt genius, that should be enough for him. Again, not gracious. But neither is coming to the home of National Hunt racing and winning the battle 23-5. That is neither cricket nor sporting, is it?
We need a genius trainer over here. Will someone please step up!