Stats Guide: Buckingham Palace Handicap

Last year’s race

Winner: Inver Park
Jockey: Ben A Curtis
Trainer: George Boughey
Owner: The Inver Park Partnership
Age: 4 Weight: 9st 1lbs
Starting Price: 12/1
Season Form Figures: 2311
Previous Best: 1st - Class 3 Handicap, Hamilton (May 2022)

Brought back to open the meeting in 2020 after its services were not required for five seasons when a race had to make way to incorporate the Commonwealth Cup into the meeting in 2015, this 7f all-aged handicap has been retained since it’s re-birth and this will be 17th running.

From those first 16 runnings I would argue that it the weakest trends handicap of the meeting (bar the new races introduced in the last three years of course) with winners coming from many ages and all over the handicap so we are very thin on pattern-based angles.

Fancied horses won the first four runnings but two 25/1 shots and a 33/1 outsider won the next three renewals followed by eight more double-figure priced winners so I would argue this is a race not to go too overboard about on the punting front. The latest of those was a certain Highfield Princess who went on to become Champion Sprinter the following season with three Group 1 wins.

Often you can gloss over handicappers aged six and upwards in hot handicaps as they are thoroughly exposed but horses aged 6+ have won five editions. However, since the race was brought back three years ago, four-year-olds filled five of the first six places from just eight representatives in a 23-runner field in 2020 and then registered a 1-2-3 in 2021 before a 1-3-5-6 last year so that would be my statistical starting point

The draw can be helpful as a middle draw in big-field, straight course handicaps isn’t usually a positive. The 2014 winner was drawn close to the stands’ rail with the previous year’s winner drawn right up against it. Centrally-drawn horses have struggled in the last nine runnings with winners coming from stalls 29, 6, 29, 30, 11, 32, 29, 26 and 2.

Ascot form is a plus. Last season’s victor, Inver Park, won at the course the previous season and had Ascot stalwart, Ropey Guest, at 40/1 back in second. The winner back in 2013 (the fifth-last running) was second in the big-field handicap for lady riders on King George Day the previous season, the 2012 winner finished fifth in the Royal Hunt Cup the previous season, the 2011 winner was second in the Victoria Cup, the 2010 winner was fifth in a Coventry Stakes, the 2009 winner had finished third in a £100K 7f handicap at the course the previous season and the 2007 winner was third in the previous season’s renewal.

Excluding the Covid year, six of the last seven winners were having at least their fourth start of the season. Of the last-winning septet, five carried 9st+ but the majority of the field are likely to do that.

Sir Michael Stoute has only saddled four runners, all four of which started in the first two in betting and none of which finished in the first ten.

POSITIVES

Four-year-olds
Quality Ascot handicap form
Drawn in the highest or lowest six stalls
Ran 3+ times earlier in the season
Don’t be afraid of big prices

NEGATIVES

Trained by Sir Michael Stoute