Last year's race

• Winner: Never So Brave
• Jockey: David Probert
• Trainer: Andrew Balding
• Owner: Saeed Suhail
• Age: 4 Weight: 9st 3lbs
• Starting Price: 11/8
• Season Form Figures: 21
• Previous Best: 1st - Buckingham Palace Stakes (Handicap), Ascot (June 2025)

By Paul Jones

The Summer Mile became a Group 2 in 2007 having undergone a number of different guises and sets of race conditions between being run at Ascot and Lingfield but it has now settled down to a regular feature of the miling programme on the Round Course for older horses that usually attracts a combination of Group 1 performers dropping down in class from the Queen Anne and improvers on an upward curve trying their luck moving up in grade.

Twelve months it was Never So Brave who was the improver successfully taking a step up in class to win this prize following up a handicap success at Royal Ascot. However, it is proven class that has come to the fore more often than not, as we certainly saw in 2023 as the narrow 2000 Guineas runner-up from two seasons earlier and subsequent Breeders’ Cup Mile winner, Master Of The Seas, ran out a 4l winner.

Three years earlier the Summer Mile was won by Mohaather who went on to win the Sussex Stakes on his next start. The following year’s winner, Tilsit, was only beaten a head in a Group 1 in France on his previous outing and the 2022 running was won by the regular Group 1-contesting Chindit.

It’s also been a fantastic race for favourite backers as Tilsit became the ninth successive successful market leader in 2022. Since then, the favourite has been beaten in three of the next four runnings but only three of the 19 winners started outside the front two in the betting.

Seven of the 19 winners since that upgrade arrived here off a victory but also note two previous strands of Ascot form as, firstly, eight winners contested the Group 1 Queen Anne over the straight mile a month earlier finishing between second-seventh so were appreciating this drop down in class including four of the last eight. More Thunder (2nd), Zeus Olympios (4th) and Docklands (7th) could represent this season’s Queen Anne form.

The second strand of Ascot form to respect is last year’s renewal because Beat The Bank and Mutakayyef are very recent dual winners of the contest plus Fanunulter and Guest Of Honour were placed in the previous year’s race before winning 12 months down the line. Last season’s runner-up Point Lynas looks to bid to go one place better.

The late Sheikh Hamdan al Maktoum’s Shadwell operation has won this race five times going back to Aqlaam in 2009 and also supplied the two runners-up in 2022 and 2023 but they have no entries this time. The race’s most successful trainer, William Haggas, however, would supply the likely favourite if declaring More Thunder in his bid for a fourth Summer Mile since 2009.

In the 19 runnings since being elevated to a Group 2, winners have been shared out fairly equally between four, five and six-year-olds so no angle there.

No filly has won since the upgrade.