Last year’s race

• Winner: Sober
• Jockey: Ryan Moore
• Trainer: Willie Mullins
• Owner: OTI Racing & The Why Knot Partnership
• Age: 6 Weight: 9st 7lbs
• Starting Price: 4/5
• Season Form Figures: 1 (National Hunt run)
• Previous Best: 1st - Prix Kergorlay (Group 2), Chantilly (August 2023)

By Paul Jones

The ‘Queen Alex’ remains the getting-out stakes ending the meeting and given its extreme distance for a flat race of 2m5½f, not all runners truly stay.

It used to be generally uncompetitive so therefore offered the punter a real chance of finishing the meeting on a high and fancied horses still usually come to the fore for the win and places with 29 of the last 34 winners starting at no bigger than 8/1. However, the quality has improved of late so the strongest recent trend is that 12 of the last 17 winners had been contesting races during the previous jumps season, might come under pressure.

Willie Mullins struck with Sober as the 4/5 favourite last season, his fifth win in the race since 2012 (he also had the 40/1 runner-up in 2018). Joseph O’Brien won the two previous runnings with very different types which also both started favourite.

In 2023 Dawn Rising was pulled up in the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle three months earlier whereas Uxmal had been given a flat-race career the following year. Sticking with the Irish and Gordon Elliott took this prize with the former Doncaster Cup winner Pallasator in 2018 and also with Commissioned in 2016 so also watch out for any Cullentra Stables runners. Honolulu (2008) remains Aidan O’Brien’s only winner.

Andrew Balding has fared best of the British trainers currently holding a licence with two winners.

As this is a Class 2 affair, it is not the classiest event at the Royal Meeting but what has been noticeable of late is that winners had been regularly contesting higher-quality races, in fact, 22 of the last 31 winners had been contesting Group and Listed races on the Flat at some point in their career.

Also bear in mind that 17 of the last 33 winners had finished in the top half-dozen in any of the three big staying races at the meeting before (Gold Cup, Ascot Stakes and Queen Alexandra Stakes).