Last season's race

• Winner: Night Breeze
• Jockey: Robbie Dolan
• Trainer: Ian Williams
• Owner: Midtech 2
• Age: 5 Weight: 9st 6lbs
• Starting Price: 11/4
• Season Form Figures: 41532
• Previous Best: 1st - Class 3 Handicap, Ascot (May 2025)

By Paul Jones

Taking place over 1m4f, it is fair to say that this handicap for older horses rated 0-100 has been a shocking race for favourite-backers, with consecutive 14 market leaders all turned over (three finished runner-up) until Night Breeze won last year’s edition, while five of the last ten winners could be found outside of the first four in the betting.

That is surprising as three of those were last-time-out winners (and the 2022 winner, Pride Of Priory, was completing a hat-trick) as were two other winners in the last decade, so the market has not given them as much respect as you might think.

The draw in handicaps over 1m4f is important at Royal Ascot where there are much bigger field sizes but just ten runners here make stalls positions less significant. It really didn’t matter where Genetics was drawn in 2018 as in winning by 12 lengths from stall 1, he turned the race into a procession, but horses drawn in stall 1 have also won two of the last three editions.

Of the last 21 winners, 17 had run in the previous month, given a day or two, and 14 of the last 15 winners were aged four or five, with four-year-olds faring best including a 1-2-3-4 in 2022 and six of the first seven home in 2024.

The Johnston (when Mark held the licence) and Balding stables have both been successful twice in the last 15 runnings. Andrew Balding has also saddled four other placed runners from 12 runners in total.