We’re little over a month away from the off at Royal Ascot 2018 with the latest renewal of the ancient and much-loved festival of horse racing beginning on Tuesday 19th June. After the curtain goes up, lovers of the sport have five action-packed days of competition to look forward to.
The Queen Anne Stakes gets the show started and bookmakers believe Le Brivido is the most likely winner of the opener with odds compilers across the board pricing the great Andre Fabre’s colt as favourite to clinch the Group One contest decided over the flat mile. 7/1 is the current feeling in the market, with Rhododendron his nearest rival at a market best price of 10/1.
The prices suggest we’re set for a wide-open race on the opening leg of the first day but those who hold the purse strings are in no two minds about Tuesday’s best bet and it goes in the St James’s Palace Stakes.
It’s another Group One affair and a talented field is expected to battle it out for the £400,000 purse with a whopping £226,840 cashed in by the victor. Seven furlongs is the distance and we saw Barney Roy land the cheque ahead of Lancaster Bomber and Thunder Snow 12 months ago. Neither of last year’s medal finishers is back for another crack at it meaning we will have a new champion.
That’s expected to be Saxon Warrior if connections see fit to send him into the race and as well as receiving the backing of the early money he also features prominently in RacingTips.com Ascot betting tips. At present, there are a few options open to handlers but traders at William Hill want to keep the team close and offer Aidan O’Brien’s colt as jolly to continue his progress with a winner’s medal from the St James’s Palace Stakes.
It’s not difficult to understand why they have taken that stance either, with the explosive three-year-old bay winning each of his first four starts. He got off to a flyer when making a winning bow at Curragh in August of last year and has gone from strength-to-strength since. In only his second start, he won the Group Two Juddmonte Beresford Stakes at Naas from stablemate Delano Roosevelt and further boosted his stock with another positive result at Doncaster in the Group One Racing Post Trophy Stakes, holding off a late charge from Roaring Lion for John Gosden.
Punters who had Saxon Warrior backed that day thought they had seen the best of him but that wasn’t the case – there was plenty more to come. That was proven when connections next stood proudly in the winner’s enclosure at Newmarket in May of this year, holding aloft the 2000 Guineas Stakes prize.
Marked out as a 3/1 second-favourite that day behind the more fancied Masar, we saw the 5/2 poke get no nearer than third, as jockey Donnacha O’Brien – the son of multiple champion trainer Aidan – drove his mount across the line 1 ½ lengths ahead of runner-up Tip Two Win.
The jockey and horse partnership worked a treat on that occasion and there will be no lack of interest in them banking Royal Ascot glory.
