All Equine All The Time

A major event on the racing calendar for people around the world, this year’s Royal Ascot meet was five days of top class racing and story lines. From the longshot homebred Accidental Agent winning the Group 1 Queen Anne in the first race to Pallasator ending the week with a victory in the Queen Alexandra Stakes, there was something for everyone at Ascot. Here are just a few of the stories that made up one of the biggest race meets of the year. By the Numbers – The 30 Royal Ascot races this year attracted 494 entries (post-scratches) over the five-day festival. Those entries were sired by 179 different stallions led by Galileo (Sadler’s Wells), who had 24 entries go to the gate with his Cliffs Of Moher running twice during the meet (finishing third in his second run). Galileo’s son Frankel led all sires with three winners and 10 top three placers overall to headline a terrific week for Juddmonte. Two hundred and twenty broodmare sires were represented during the week wi...

Nearly a decade after her passing, Urban Sea (Miswaki) proved to still be the Queen of the Track at Epsom during Derby weekend. The 1993 Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe winner wasn’t only present in the pedigrees of many horses who won or placed in the three Group 1 races at the track on Friday and Saturday but also those who ran in said races with 15 runners between the Oaks and Derby descending from the mare. Four of the six entries in the Coronation Cup also traced back to the bluehen mare to give her an astounding 70.4 percent of the runners in the Group 1 races at Epsom. Urban Sea's 1993 Arc victory Looking at those numbers, it isn’t surprising that Urban Sea was responsible for the winners of all three races nor that in two of the races she had multiple representation in the top three. Frankel’s Cracksman was nearly beaten by Salouen (Canford Cliffs) in the Coronation Cup on Friday to get the festives started but if he would have failed to get up to the runner-up in t...