Strong opening card Tuesday at Royal Ascot worthy of queen's visit

They don’t mess around at Royal Ascot. Once the preliminaries – like placing bets on the color of the outfit in which the queen will arrive in the royal carriage to inaugurate the festivities – have been completed, the five-day meeting begins with a bang, the $755,500 Queen Anne Stakes, the first of three Group 1s among six races on the Royal meet’s opening card and a Win and You're In race for the Breeders' Cup Mile.

Following the Queen Anne comes the Group 2 Coventry for 2-year-olds, a race in which trainer Wesley Ward has no entrant this year. The Group 1 King’s Stand, a straight-course sprint, is the third race of the day, with the Group 1 St. James’s Palace over a one-turn mile for 3-year-olds coming next, and a couple of huge-field handicap races close the program. First post is 9:30 a.m. Eastern, and as of Sunday, the going at Ascot was good to soft, soft in places. Periods of rain are forecast for the area Tuesday.

If you can figure out the Queen Anne, a testing straight-course mile, you’re going to get paid because the 16-horse field lacks anything resembling a standout. It does include last year’s 33-1 upset winner, Accidental Agent, who has done little since to suggest the performance was more than fluky, and demonstrates that once again, the European miler division is rife with chaos.

In the Group 1 J.T. Lockinge Stakes, a straight-course mile last month at Newbury, the 6-year-old Mustashry stepped up with the biggest win of his career, beating the 4-year-old filly Laurens by 2 1/2 lengths, Accidental Agent another half-length back in third. Mustashry, trained by Michael Stoute for Hamdan al Maktoum, has hinted at high-level performances in the past, but betting on a horse to win a second straight Group 1 after it took him 18 starts and five calendar years of racing to get the first seems dicey.

Laurens stands a better chance Tuesday, when she figures to improve in the second start of her season. Laurens won four Group 1 races last year at age 3 and probably had some rust to shake off at Newbury, though too much rain might work against a filly whose best races have come on firmer going.

Le Brivido was the tepid antepost favorite with British bookmakers as of Sunday, though one wonders on what grounds other than the mystique of trainer Aidan O’Brien. Le Brivido missed a good portion of 2017 and nearly all of 2018 and only joined Team O’Brien for his 2019 campaign. He finished a well-beaten fifth in the Lockinge, and it’s hard to see where the needed improvement will come.

Barney Roy’s stud career floundered in 2018, and Godolphin unretired him for a 2019 return to the track. He won a minor race at Longchamp last out in the second start of his comeback but is far removed from the form that won him the 2017 St. James’s Palace on the Royal Ascot opening card.

The five-furlong King’s Stand, worth $629,671, drew 12 entrants, including the first three finishers from the 2018 renewal – Blue Point, Battaash, and Mabs Cross – as well as American invader Imprimis. Blue Point races for the first time since a dominant campaign in Dubai culminating with a comfortable win in the Group 1 Al Quoz Sprint over a straight six furlongs. Blue Point, however, drew poorly in post 1 and wouldn’t want the turf to be much softer than it was listed Sunday. Battaash copes better with give in the going and has a better draw, post 12, coming off an easy win in the Group 2 Temple Stakes, the same race used as a prep for his fine run in the 2018 King’s Stand.

Mabs Cross is a fine sprinter but can’t handle the top two at their best. The Joe Orseno-trained Imprimis will try to emulate the American-based filly Lady Aurelia, who won this race in 2017. The straight course and international travel are new for Imprimis but the horse has been in awesome form turf sprinting, overcoming a terrible start to beat the high-class Bound for Nowhere at Keeneland in his most recent race.

The St. James’s Palace, run around one right-handed bend, looks like a showdown between Phoenix of Spain and Too Darn Hot, the one-two finishers May 25 in the Irish 2000 Guineas. Too Darn Hot, the best 2-year-old in Europe last year, was heavily favored to win that race but never came close to catching Phoenix of Spain, who went to the front and scored by three lengths while making his first start at age 3.