Royal Ascot: Ward, Ortiz will be teaming up

With every passing year there’s increased American excitement over the Royal Ascot meet. No one in America should be more excited for the 2022 Royal meeting, which runs Tuesday through Saturday, than New York-based jockey Irad Ortiz Jr.

Ortiz never has ridden at Ascot, but trainer Wesley Ward, a regular Royal Ascot winner, has tapped Ortiz to ride his five starters.

“It’s one of those places I really want to go, a special place where they care so much about the sport, and I love that. I can’t wait,” Ortiz said Thursday at Belmont.

The wait’s almost over. Ortiz rides one of the meeting’s stars on Tuesday’s blockbuster card, Golden Pal, the narrow favorite with English bookmakers to win the five-furlong, straight-course King’s Stand.

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The King’s Stand is one of three Group 1s on Tuesday along with the Queen Anne and the St. James’s Palace. The Queen Anne, a straight-course mile, almost certainly belongs to Baaeed, Europe’s leading miler. The St. James’s Palace, a one-turn mile for 3-year-olds, has English 2000 Guineas winner Coroebus as the odds-on early favorite. The Rusty Arnold-trained 2-year-old Late September goes in the Coventry Stakes.

Ward and Ortiz are in two Wednesday races with Love Reigns, the lightning-fast 2-year-old filly near the head of the betting market for the Queen Mary, and Seismic Spirit, a longer price in the listed Windsor Castle. The Wednesday feature is the Group 1 Prince of Wales’s, which includes Shahryar, one of two Japanese horses expected to race next week. Australians also have traveled to England, with Nature Strip close to the same price as Golden Pal for the King’s Stand.

Thursday’s feature, the 2 1/2-mile Gold Cup, brings out revered 8-year-old stayer Stradivarius, who seeks his fourth Gold Cup win in his fifth appearance. Friday, American 3-year-old fillies Spendarella and Pizza Bianca face an especially salty bunch of European 3-year-old fillies in the Group 1 Coronation Stakes. Slipstream, trained by Christophe Clement, tries the Group 1 Commonwealth Cup for 3-year-olds over six furlongs, while Ward and Ortiz have Ruthin for the listed Palace of Holyroodhouse Stakes. On Saturday, Ward will give Ortiz a leg up on the filly Campanelle in the six-furlong, Group 1 Platinum Jubilee, a race expected to include the Australian runner Home Affairs and Japan-based Grenadier Guards.

Ward continues calling Golden Pal the best horse he’s ever trained, but while Campanelle is a three-time overseas winner, Golden Pal’s only turf losses came in his two English races, both down a straight course. Ortiz has exactly one race’s worth of straight-course experience, having ridden Acapulco to a second-place finish in the 2015 Nunthorpe at York Racecourse.

“Some horses like it, some don’t,” Ortiz said of straight-course racing. “Sometimes they’ll relax, some horses maybe going straight, they just want to roll.”

Ortiz said he’ll do his serious Ascot homework once he arrives in England and can look firsthand at the course. The key to success, he said, is the same as anywhere: “You have to have the right horse.”