Will Royal Ascot go Ahead in 2020?

With due respect to other summer racing festivals, such as the Moet & Chandon July Festival at Newmarket and the Qatar Goodwood Festival, Royal Ascot is the undisputed ‘jewel in the crown’ of the summer racing programme in Britain. Indeed, the Royal Meeting is renowned as one of the greatest sporting and social events anywhere in the world.

In 2020, Royal Ascot is scheduled for Tuesday, June 16 until Saturday, June 20 but, at the time of writing, Britain has been under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic for two weeks. Current speculation is that, if Britain mirrors China – which, in early April, reported no coronavirus deaths for the first time since January – the Government could be in a position to, at least, consider lifting restrictions by ‘early summer’. Of course, the ‘astronomical’ summer does not start until June 20 so, while the Ascot authority is considering ‘a range of options’ with regard to future race meetings, Royal Ascot 2020 is still in the balance.

“It may prove possible to run the Royal Ascot races behind closed doors, dependent on government and public health policy and the approval of the BHA [British Horseracing Authority] for us to re-start racing,” said Ascot Racecourse’s chief exec Guy Henderson.

What are some slang terms for the favourite in a horse race?

Of course, the favourite in a horse race is the horse offered at the shortest odds by the bookmakers; if two, or more, horses share favouritism, they are referred to as joint-favourites, or co-favourites. In betting parlance, alternative terms for the favourite in a horse race include ‘jolly’, ‘chalk’ and ‘sponk’. ‘Jolly’ is simply derived from the phrase ‘jolly old favourite’. ‘Chalk’ dates from the days when bookmakers wrote, and rewrote, odds on a blackboard; if a favourite attracted money, its odds needed to be erased and rewritten over and over again, clouding the blackboard with chalk dust. ‘Sponk’ is British public school slang for ‘infatuated’ dating from the Forties; the term apparently became obsolete by the late Sixties, but still occurs, in the same sense, in horse racing circles. Of course, not all favourites win; a favourite considered unworthy of heading the betting market, for whatever reason, may be referred to simply as a ‘false favourite’ or, colloquially, as a ‘Bismarck’, after the German battleship scuttled off the coast of France during World War II.

How do I pick a likely outsider?

Generally speaking, it is fair to say that a good horse does not become a bad horse overnight and vice versa. Many horses that are sent off at long prices have demonstrated that they are disappointing, regressive, temperamentally unsound or just plain poor and, consequently, have little or no realistic chance of winning. However, not all outsiders are the complete ‘no-hopers’ that their odds suggest, so the trick is to look beyond recent performances – which, with few exceptions, form the basis of the betting market – and consider, instead, the entire career form of each horse.

Of course, form that is more than, say, a season old needs to be treated with a degree of caution, but viewing the ‘bigger picture’ may reveal a disparity in class, course, distance, going or weight, or even something as simple as a change of headgear, which has a bearing on the outcome of the race under consideration. Most horse races are won by horses attempting little or nothing more than they have achieved in the past, but a horse that has recently won a similar race, under similar conditions, is likely to start at significantly shorter odds than one that did so some time ago. This is particularly true if the latter has raced under unfavourable conditions, for whatever reason, on recent starts. However, this does not mean the horse cannot win again if conditions are, once again, in its favour.

Before Frankel, which was the highest-rated horse in the history of Timeform?

On June 19, 2012, Frankel recorded what the Racing Post reported as an ‘extremely impressive’ 11-length victory over Excelebration in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot and, in so doing, became the highest-rated horse in the history of Timeform, which first published ratings in ‘Racehorses of 1948’. As confirmed in ‘Racehorses of 2012’, Frankel was awarded a rating of 147, 2lb superior to Sea-Bird, who was beaten just once in an eight-race career in 1964 and 1965 and awarded a rating of 145 after winning all five starts as a three-year-old. Sea-Bird raced just once in Britain, effortlessly beating Meadow Court and twenty other rivals by two lengths in the Derby without coming off the bridle.

Later in 1965, Sea-Bird was sent off 6/5 favourite for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, despite facing the strongest field of middle-distance talent ever assembled, including the hitherto unbeaten Prix du Jockey Club, or French Derby, winner Reliance. Despite sweating profusely in the preliminaries, Sea-Bird was travelling well in fifth place approaching the home straight and, thereafter, came clear of his rivals along with the eventual runner-up, Reliance. Sea-Bird veered alarmingly across the track in the last half a furlong or so, but still won by an official margin of six lengths, with Australian-born jockey Pat Glennon patting him down the neck in the closing stages.

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