Last year’s race

• Winner: Crimson Advocate
• Jockey: James McDonald
• Trainer: John & Thady Gosden
• Owner: Wathnan Racing
• Age: 4 Weight: 9st 2lbs
• Starting Price: 13/2
• Season Form Figures: 21
• Previous Best: 1st - Queen Mary Stakes (Group 2), Royal Ascot (June 2023)

By Paul Jones

This Group 2 affair for older fillies and mares over the straight mile will be the twenty-third running since it was upgraded from being a Listed race at the September Meeting. A number of strong patterns have emerged since its upgrade. None more so than 16 of the last 17 winners being four-year-olds, the Marco Botti-trained Aljazzi in 2018 being the outlier.

Switched to the Round Course from the straight mile for the last two years, that move had an immediate impact as the winner, Running Lion, received the best ride in making all the running with Oisin Murphy tracking over to the rail after racing wide early from stall 11.

Peeress (14/1) and Amazing Maria (25/1) were hard to find but the favourite or second-favourite has won on 12 occasions. One of those was the 2022 winner, Saffron Beach, where she overcame one significant negative trend. In victory she became the first winner to defy a Group 1 winning penalty of 5lb from 15 to try and in some style too by 3½l. Usherette defied 3lb penalty ten years ago when an extra 2lb would have made no difference to that result. The 3lb penalty may have cost last season’s runner-up, Cinderella’s Dream, the race, though.

Seventeen of the 22 winners since the race became part of Royal Ascot had won a Group 2 or Group 3 earlier in their career with another four having won at Listed level. Therefore, Move Swiftly would not have been on the radar of trends backers in 2019 being the only winner of the Duke of Cambridge not to have won at any of those levels.

The Gosden stable have won six runnings going back to 2007 after Crimson Advocate’s success 12 months ago and the leading owners are Cheveley Park Stud with four victories so also look out for their red and white silks being great supporters of the fillies’ and mares’ programme.

Even though there is not much time between the two races, the Princess Elizabeth Stakes (Group 3) at Epsom often throws up a leading hope but the Dahlia Stakes (Group 2) at the Guineas Meeting has been a more notable guide as the last nine winners to take their chance here have produced two winners, three seconds and a third plus Integral and Running Lion both finished second before adding this more sought-after prize. This season’s Dahlia saw Jancis beat Cathedral with a big gap back to the remainder, though she has only fifth since in a Group 12 at The Curragh for fillies and mares.

After Cinderella’s Dream second-place last season, Godolphin have sent out five beaten favourites but the Andre Fabre-trained Usherette put that right for them as market leader ten years ago. The French are not to be underestimated having supplied three winners, two seconds and three thirds so pay any Gallic rivals plenty of respect.

Of the 22 winners when this race was run at Ascot (one running at York), seven had previously recorded a victory at the course (Crimson Advocate was following up her Queen Mary win last year) and another three had been placed at the previous year’s Royal Meeting so quality course form is certainly a bonus.