Royal Ascot 2021 Stats Guides: Queen Alexandra Stakes
The ‘Queen Alex’ remains the getting-out stakes ending the meeting and given its extreme distance for a flat race of 2m5½f, not all runners truly stay.
At The RacesJun 18, 2021
The ‘Queen Alex’ remains the getting-out stakes ending the meeting and given its extreme distance for a flat race of 2m5½f, not all runners truly stay.
This is the second running of this handicap over 1m2f for three-year-olds rated 0-105 (though horses rated 106-107 are also eligible). The first running was won by the top weight, Highland Chief, who was drawn widest of all from stall 16 and went on to contest the Derby, beating the subsequent Adonis Hurdle winner, Tritonic, into second.
The quality of horse require to run in the Wokingham keeps is higher now than ever before so previous weight and official rating stats are rendered pretty much irrelevant as we are no longer dealing with like for like. Five winning favourites this century is a good return for such a competitive sprint handicap.
Previous Royal Ascot form has been a useful pointer as 12 of the last 25 winners had been placed at worst at this meeting before. In fact, both of last season’s 1-2 had placed at the meeting the previous year and the runner-up, Dream Of Dreams, is trying to make it third time lucky in this race having been touched off in photo finishes for the last two years. Whether it is the Berkshire course that brings the best out of such contenders or the fact that their connections have readied them for this particular week is a difficult one to weigh up but I would argue that there is something in both arguments.
When successful aged five in 2019, Defoe ended the long sequence of winning four-year-olds that has stretched out to 11 runnings. Jupiter Island is the only winner over the age of five since 1905.
Pinatubo was giving Godolphin their third win in the Chesham in 2019 and they have another likely big player in New Science after he impressed on debut at Yarmouth. Godolphin also ran their Derby winner, Masar, in this race when finishing third in 2017 so the Chesham has featured two domestic Classic winners in its last five runnings (Churchill being the other) so it has become a much more fashionable race of late.
The one-mile Poule d’Essai des Pouliches, France’s 1000 Guineas, was too short for Philomene, but Sunday’s Prix de Diane, the French Oaks, could be just right.
Only eight programs remain in the long Hong Kong racing season, and Sunday’s card at Sha Tin is a good one.
Better Kick, unraced since late November, starts in a five-furlong handicap at Bendigo Racecourse, north of Melbourne, on Sunday.
The Kentucky-based filly Campanelle maintained her perfect record in major European stakes when she was rightfully promoted from second to first in Friday’s Group 1 Commonwealth Cup for 3-year-old sprinters at Royal Ascot.