It is possible to pinpoint with a considerable degree of accuracy the moment when Britain’s bookmaking industry last faced the possibility of a truly ruinous day at the races. At 5.05pm (and 22 seconds) on 20 June 2019, the 28-strong field in the Britannia Handicap at Royal Ascot was approaching the furlong pole and Turgenev, who had set off as the 7-2 favourite, was going strongly in front with a lead of nearly three lengths and trading at around 1-3 in-running on Betfair.
Frankie Dettori, Turgenev’s rider, had already won the first four races on the card, at odds of 5-1, 13-2, 4-1 and evens. Victory No 5 on the day would have completed a 2,024-1 accumulator at SP, with many of Dettori’s loyal followers having banked much bigger prices earlier in the day. Just 12 seconds later, though, the bookmakers could breathe again, as Harry Bentley and Biometric emerged from the pack to win by a length-and-a-quarter.
It was a dramatic and memorable afternoon, but also just one among many at the Royal meeting over the last three decades when Dettori, the most high-profile and popular rider of the post-Lester Piggott era, has demonstrated his ability to seize control of the narrative, at Ascot above all.
Much was said and written about his final ride in the Derby earlier this month, but Epsom, for whatever reason, was never really his track. Ascot absolutely is, and four years to the day after his latest golden afternoon at the course, Dettori has six booked rides on Tuesday’s opening card at what will be his final Royal meeting before he retires from the saddle later this year.
All six are priced up at single-figure odds, ranging from Inspiral, at 15-8, in the opening Queen Anne Stakes, to Absurde, at 5-1, in the Copper Horse Handicap at 6.10. If we all work together and put on £5 each-way accumulators at the current combined odds of around 10,000-1, the potential is certainly there to bring the bookies to their knees.
But at the same time, the simple fact that all of Dettori’s opening-day rides are odds-against is a reminder that while Cheltenham in March has overtaken Royal Ascot as the biggest meeting of the year from a betting perspective, these five days in June still offer the best and most competitive British Flat racing of the season. Inspiral ran away with the Coronation Stakes 12 months ago but is not even sure to start favourite for the Queen Anne, while Chaldean, Dettori’s fourth and final 2,000 Guineas winner at Newmarket in May, is only narrowly preferred to Paddington, who took the Irish equivalent, in the betting for the St James’s Palace Stakes.
And, like Cheltenham, this most traditional of race meetings continues to evolve. When Dettori rode his memorable four-timer just four years ago, the six-races-per-day format seemed unshakeable. Post-Covid, when the 2020 meeting behind closed doors increased to seven on the first four days and no fewer than eight on Saturday, it has settled at seven-per-day and 35 over the week.
The race that charted the last 20 years of the late Queen’s reign, meanwhile, first as the Golden Jubilee Stakes from 2002 and then the Platinum Jubilee from 2012, is now the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes, the feature on Saturday’s card. And while it remains to be seen how regularly the new King and Queen will be in attendance, their colours will be aboard several runners with a chance, including Saga, the likely favourite and another in Dettori’s book of rides, in Tuesday’s Wolferton Stakes.
And though Dettori is very likely to end his Royal Ascot career as the second-most successful jockey in the meeting’s history, even that is not entirely guaranteed. Dettori has 77 winners at the meeting so far, but the rider currently attracting all the money to be the week’s top jockey is Ryan Moore, who has 73. Aidan O’Brien’s principal rider was, briefly, odds-against last week, but is now no bigger than 4-6 to win the jockeys’ prize for the 10th time in 14 years.
A net gain of four would therefore put Moore alongside Dettori in the all-time list, though still a long way behind the astonishing Piggott, who died in May 2022, and who amassed 116 Royal Ascot winners in an era when there were just 24 races to aim at each season.
Whoever claims the riding honours this week – and William Buick and Oisin Murphy are in with a serious shout, too – the Long Fellow’s place as the greatest Royal Ascot jockey will surely outlive us all.
