Royal Ascot 2024: Queen Anne Stakes Stats Guide

Queen Anne Stakes
Group 1 | Class 1 | 4YO plus
Winner £425,325 - 21 entered to run

Last year’s race

Triple Time
Winner: Triple Time
Jockey: Neil Callan
Trainer: Kevin A Ryan
Owner: Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum
Age: 4
Weight: 9st 2lbs
Starting Price: 33/1
Season Form Figures: Seasonal debut
Previous Best: 1st - Best Odds On The Betfair Exchange Superior Mile Stakes (Group 3), Haydock (September 2022)

By Paul Jones

We have the strongest trends race of Royal Ascot to kick off the five-day extravaganza.

Sixteen of the last 21 winners had already struck at Group 1 level and it is the Lockinge Stakes that has been the key guide having featured 24 Queen Anne winners since 1980, including Palace Pier and Baaeed who completed the double in two of the last three seasons.

Being the first domestic Group 1 of the season for older horses that takes place over a mile, the Lockinge is the natural starting point. However, defeated horses at Newbury actually have a better winning record than the winners, claiming 15 of the last 28 runnings. But, of course, there are more beaten horses than winners, so plenty will be siding with the likes of Charyn (2nd), Witch Hunter (3rd), Inspiral (4th) and Big Rock (6th) to overturn form with surprise winner Audience, who was thought to be a pacemaker trying a mile for the first time but never looked like coming back to the pack in winning by 1¾ lengths. He won’t be allowed as much rope out in front this time around.

In 2019 and at the age of six, Lord Glitters became the oldest winner since 1976, but all 16 entries this year, bar seven-year-old outsider Sean, are aged four or five. Charyn and Big Rock are four-year-olds and they have by far the best record, having won 24 of the last 31 runnings of the Queen Anne, as is the unbeaten-in-three leading fancy Quddwah, who won the Paradise Stakes over course and distance in early May when getting up late to beat Docklands.

In very recent seasons, the Paradise Stakes has been marketed as a Queen Anne trial despite its Listed status, but results show that this is now justified. For example, the winner in 2020 went on to be a big-priced third in the Queen Anne, while the 2019 third Accidental Agent even went on to cause a 33/1 surprise in the Queen Anne after finishing sixth in the Lockinge in between. The Paradise Stakes winner that year in Century Dream also ran very well in the Queen Anne, only beaten ¾ of a length into fourth, with the 2022 third Sir Busker filling the same position in the Group 1 at the Royal Meeting.

Last season’s runner-up on her seasonal debut, Inspiral has had a prep run this time around. Prior to Triple Time's 33/1 surprise last year and ignoring the Covid-affected season - when Royal Ascot began just two weeks into the belated start of the 2020 season - only one seasonal debutante (Toronado) had won since Allied Forces in 1997, so that has to be a positive for a mare who improved throughout last season, winning three Group 1 races in the second half of the campaign.

Inspiral is the clear pick of the mares, but the only two fillies/mares to win in the Queen Anne in the last 49 years were the reigning Breeders’ Cup Mile winners Goldikova and Tepin. That said, Inspiral won her Breeders’ Cup race last season when taking the Filly & Mare Turf over 1m2f, so she also has the option of the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes over that same distance. If the latter does turn out to be the chosen path, her owners still have Audience to represent them in the Queen Anne.

The French have won on three occasions going back to 2005 and Dubai Turf winner Facteur Cheval, who beat two Japanese-trained horses into second and third following a host of placed efforts in Group 1s last season, inherited ante-post favouritism after Inspiral and Big Rock were well beaten in the Lockinge. Just four winners since 1995 didn’t feature in the first four in the betting.

Modern Games may have disappointed as favourite last year after winning the Lockinge, but Godolphin have won eight Queen Anne’s down the years, though surprisingly they have no entries this year. Neither does Aidan O’Brien, who has had mixed fortunes in the Queen Anne for Coolmore, as horses with more brilliance than his four winners (Ad Valorem, Haradasun, Declaration Of War and Circus Maximus) in the shape of Hawk Wing, George Washington and Rip Van Winkle all failed to even place.

The Hannon stable have won three of the last 15 renewals and are set to be represented by Witch Hunter. Sir Michael Stoute won all three runnings between 2000-2002 but none before or after, and he will also be unrepresented on this occasion.

At a glance summary

POSITIVES
Contested the Lockinge Stakes
Four-year-olds

NEGATIVES
Failed to win a Group 1
Outside the first four in the betting
Aged over five
Fillies/mares (unless a Breeders’ Cup winner)
Seasonal debutantes