Racing and Sports' Adam Blencowe looks at the opening day of Royal Ascot 2023.
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire."
- Mahler
The current age is often (quite rightly) described as the information age; never have people had so much information so readily available. But information can be described the same way that Churchill described the drink – both a great servant and a terrible master.
The vast amount of information leads us to overvalue the quantifiable and undervalue the weird and the wonderful.
Ascot's Royal Meeting isn't the best week of the racing year because of the things you can count; the prizemoney, the tickets sold, the viewers engaged with #content (kill me…)
Royal Ascot is the best week of the year because of how you feel when the bell rings at the corner.
Historically, the ringing of the bell as horses swing through the Ascot corner served as a warning for people on the track* but now it serves as a stirrer for the soul. The bell's raison d'etre is ashes but it remains a key part of Ascot's fire.
Little feels so good as seeing a well-punted horse moving with purpose as the bell rings.
Alas, that feeling is not easily conveyed and not easily counted.
Attempts to do Royal Ascot justice with what can be counted will fall pathetically short while those who move away from the quantifiable invariably end up spewing banal and vapid platitudes that put the television remote at risk.
Tradition is a dirty word among the reason-hungry optimisers of the information age, but we thrive on ritual and tradition now as we always have.
Media and industry insiders can (and will) write and talk endlessly about the economics and administrative issues in the sport, but punters and fans simply do not care. What we care about are the horses, the people, the puzzle, and the punt.
And nowhere is what we care about better served up than at Ascot over the next five days.
Those five days will be covered here in the format of Racing and Sports' award-winning** podcast, the Punters Preamble, highlighting the highest-rated horse on the card based on Racing and Sports Ratings (hereby written as RSR), the 'Dunno' (a horse that could be viewed very differently i.e. this horse could be both an odds-on chance or a 100-1 chance depending on a certain variable – typically RSRs) and the 'Bizzarro' (a horse that is bizarrely priced viewed through the lens of RSRs (though may be well priced and often is based on other factors. The unquantified if you like.))
On to Day One.
Top Rated – Modern Games 128
Traditionally, the Royal Meeting begins with a procession, and in the last two years that has been followed immediately by another; the Queen Anne going the way of a long odds-on shot without so much as a moment of jeopardy.
Things might not be quite as straightforward this time but once again the Queen Anne favourite is the highest-rated horse on the opening day of the Royal Meeting and once again it is the Lockinge winner.
Those last two winners, both odds-on, were Baaeed and Palace Pier who had run 130 and 129 respectively when winning the Lockinge. Ribchester, who did the same double in 2017, was a shade better than evens at Ascot having run 131 at Newbury.
Modern Games didn't have to be at his absolute best to see off a hungry Chindit and land his fifth Group One in the Lockinge (some (patriotic) English handicappers disagree)) and a rating of 126 there means his grip doesn't look quite as tight as the trio mentioned above.
This means we see him priced up as a one-in-three rather than a one-in-two.
Obvious chances are rarely great betting commodities. 14 Lockinge winners in the past 20 years have followed the obvious path on to the Queen Anne. Five have followed up and won. The market expected six.
You won't get badly hurt backing Lockinge winners in the Queen Anne but you won't get any great edge either.
That said, Modern Games is more than just his Lockinge win. His 128-rated best from the Woodbine Mile says he has the tools to make up a strong Queen Anne winner and drawing ratings from the last five runs at random makes Modern Games a bit more likely than 2/1 implies.
Click here for the Racing and Sports Predictor for the Queen Anne
Dunno
A wise man once said, "The vast amount of information leads us to overvalue the quantifiable and undervalue the weird and the wonderful." It was me, at the top of the page, and it seems relevant in the Coventry where debate has raged about who should be favourite. For those wondering, it has raged where it so often does, Twitter dot com…
What can be measured: Asadna ran really (really) fast beating (absolutely) nothing at Ripon and should have a great chance of winning the Coventry based on that.
But those who don't like measuring will tell you that backing a horse off a junk race at Ripon to beat the might of Aidan O'Brien, Ryan Moore, Coolmore, and River Tiber (very fast as well) at similar prices is straight up stupid – measuring devices be damned!
Back the time or the profile? Dunno.
Siding with the strength of O'Brien makes some sense, particularly when the ducks are lined up as strongly as they are with River Tiber, but four Coventry wins from 26 runners, 16 of which started single figures, is not unopposable and O'Brien has failed to keep pace with the market at Ascot over the past five years.
128 runners from Ripon have fronted up at Ascot in the past decade. Ten winners make for an impact value (strike rate over participation rate) of 1.11. So they win what they should.
161 runners have turned up from Naas (several with River Tiberesque profiles which are (very) rare from Ripon) for 12 winners at 1.32.
What to make of that? Dunno. Be some race though.
Bizzaro
This one is easy. Cannonball is in the King's Stand. What on earth is he doing there?
He was in markets at close to 10/1 for much of the week but as the betting strengthens that will surely change. 40/1 is my best guess at his true odds and that despite this being a thin-looking King's Stand.
Cannonball does front up off three straight career-best efforts. The first at Flemington in October, running to 105, before returning in 2023 to win a Group Three running 112 (seeing off the similarly talented (that is to say very but not let's-get-on-a-plane talented) Athelric and with sectionals suggesting that the third-placed Quick Tempo was every bit as good as both of them ) and then backing that up in the Galaxy last time.
A few Galaxy winners have fronted up here. Magnus ran 3rd (then 8th after a Galaxy 4th). Nicconi ran 4th and Ortensia (came a couple of years later) ran 9th.
Galaxy losers Gold Trail and Bentley Biscuit ran 10th and 20th.
All mentioned rated well clear of Cannonball who could (perhaps even should) improve now, but will certainly need to. His current rating has finished 7th on average in the King's Stand.
Enough with the negatives. Coolangatta brings the well-documented Lightning profile to the race and, while she can't claim to be rated anywhere near as highly as those that have done that double in the past, she does shape as a good winning hope all being well.
The best winning hope (and I am told that the only thing people really want out of these previews is a tip, not pages of waffle and quotes from Mahler…) by a long way is Highfield Princess who was brilliant in 2022, running the sort of rating that would win this, and win it well, in four of her five wins. She was close enough to that peak to forecast it coming here on the opening day.
Highfield Princess moved into the race with purpose at York – the best feeling racing can offer – but she just lacked the sharpness of a recent run that was seemingly required to land the knockout blow.
That can come now, second up and back to five furlongs on quick ground, and I would think that, despite the big field and the frantic nature of such a race, her chance is on the good side of 2/1.
*This is no longer an issue with those on the track during races nowadays there intentionally, out to disrupt the race but primarily providing viewers with a timely reminder that information really can be a terrible master when it is funnelled into the human brain.
**Inspired by thoroughbred breeders, a group only matched by actors when it comes to awarding themselves awards, I have decided to award the podcast I frequent with my own award.
