Quiet Reflection, a winner of four consecutive sprint stakes in England and France, will be favored to win the first Group 1 race of her career in Friday’s $567,800 Commonwealth Cup for 3-year-olds at Royal Ascot in England.
The Commonwealth Cup, run at six furlongs, drew a field of 12 but does not include Acapulco, the American-based runner who was withdrawn because of soft turf conditions at Ascot this week.
A Shin Hikari, the heavy favorite for the Group 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes on Wednesday at Royal Ascot, proved a major disappointment, but Lady Aurelia most certainly did not in the Queen Mary Stakes.
The Wesley Ward-trained 2-year-old filly turned in what must have been one of the more memorable performances in the modern history of Royal Ascot, winning the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes by seven lengths. That huge margin came in a race just five furlongs long, and Lady Aurelia stunned her rivals with a devastating turn of foot to accompany dominant speed.
Frankie Dettori and Galileo Gold got first run on their two main rivals and held off unlucky favorite The Ghurka to win the St. James’s Palace Stakes, the last of three Group 1's on Tuesday’s opening card of the Royal Ascot meeting.
Straight course, soft ground, no Lasix – Tepin threw all those presumed impediments aside and scored an historic victory Tuesday at Royal Ascot in the Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes.
Becoming the first American-based winner of the Queen Anne, the famed first race of the Royal Ascot meeting, Tepin, always prominent under Julien Leparoux, beat Belardo by a half-length, with Lightning Spear third and Toormore fourth.
If you are from England, an Anglophile, or even a royalist, the Thursday card at Royal Ascot may hold special meaning. For the rest of us, it is a breather of sorts after the bombardment of top-class races Tuesday and Wednesday there.
A Shin Hikari, who might be the most exciting horse racing at Royal Ascot this week, gets his chance to shine Wednesday in the Group 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the featured fourth race on an excellent six-race program that also includes the Duke of Cambridge Stakes, headlined by the American filly Miss Temple City.
The most compelling story at Royal Ascot this week, for American racing fans at least, is Tepin’s bid to win the Queen Anne Stakes, the first race on Tuesday’s opening-day card of the five-day Royal meeting, but the story at Ascot has become the weather, and that story encompasses more than just an American perspective.
The 2016 Royal Ascot meeting, as usual, begins with a bang Tuesday, with one of the meet’s most prestigious races, the Group 1 Queen Anne, the first race on the strongest top-to-bottom card of the five-day stand. And this year’s Queen Anne packs an extra kick for American racing fans since its favorite is the mighty mare Tepin, the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Mile winner who has risen during the last year to become one of the top horses in North America.
Almanzor scored an upset win in Sunday’s $1,699,350 French Derby at Chantilly Racecourse in his first start in a Group 1 race.
Ridden by Jean Bernard-Eyquem, Almanzor (19-1) closed from midpack in a field of 16 colts and fillies to win by 1 1/2 lengths over the regally bred Zarak. The French Derby is run at 1 5/16 miles on turf. Dicton, a 10-1 shot finished third, while Mekhtaal, a Group 2 winner last month at Deauville, could only finish eighth as the 9-2 favorite.
Almanzor and Mekhtaal are trained by Jean Claude-Rouget, 52, who won the race with Le Havre in 2009.
Harzand, who nearly was scratched from the race after losing a shoe, won the $1.27 million Epsom Derby on Saturday by 1 1/2 lengths over US Army Ranger.
The victory was the fifth Derby win for Harzand’s breeder and owner, the Aga Khan, but the first for trainer Dermot Weld and his longtime stable jockey, Pat Smullen.
Idaho, like US Army Ranger trained by Aidan O’Brien, finished third, giving Ireland-based runners a sweep of the top three Derby placings. The John Gosden-trained Wings of Desire, the race’s tepid antepost favorite, finished a distant fourth.
