Baattash and
Japan join the double Gold Cup winner as favourites in the Group One races while Kaeso could upset the odds in Tuesday’s opener
Royal Ascot At Home – as the meeting has been rebranded for, hopefully, one year only – poses even more challenges for punters than it would normally. There are not only more races – 36, rather than 30 – but the horses that have managed to get a run since racing resumed on 1 June will be arriving at Ascot only two weeks later. Will they progress, or bounce? And how fit will the first-time-up runners be after eight months or more on the sidelines? Backers should proceed with caution.
There will still be no shortage of short-priced favourites in the Group One contests, though, as the brilliant sprinter Baattash (King’s Stand Stakes), last year’s International Stakes winner Japan (in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes) and dual Gold Cup winner Stradivarius line up for the feature events on the first three days of the meeting.