Rest of Royal Ascot: day four

to be honest, this is the weakest card of the meeting, but still of course much better than most other racecourses can dream of. The card opens with the Group Three Albany Stakes for 2yo fillies over 6 furlongs at 15.30; most of the fillies have run only once - 9 of them winning their only start, so that a form choice is hard to find, but Newfangled (John Gosden/ William Buick) won her race in Newmarket in excellent style and could be the one.

Astrologer (Aidan O´Brien/ Ryan Moore) was third in the Derby after making most of the running and should be too strong for his 5 opponents in the Group Two King Edward VII Stakes at 16.05. He is a son of Galileo, like Noble Mission (Sir Henry Cecil/ Tom Queally), Frankel´s full brother. and Shantaram (Gosden/ Buick) and they can follow him home.

The Group Three Queen´s Vase for 3yo´s over 2 miles at 18.00 could well see a winner in the royal colours - Estimate (Sir Michael Stoute/ Ryan Moore), by Monsun, who won impressively at Salisbury last time. This is a very tricky race, as most of the runners are very lightly-raced and none have form over this distance, but Yasdi (Brian Meehan) and Minimise Risk (Andrew Balding/ Jamie Spencer) must also be considered.

The two handicaps are as always extremely difficult, and even with non-runners both at 17.25 and 18.35 there are plenty of possibilities in both events. Our 3 against the field in the former are Retrieve (Saeed bin Suroor/ Frankie Dettori), Mijhaar (Roger Varian/ Neil Callan) and Gatewood (Gosden/ Buick), and 4 against the field in the latter are Belgian Bill (George Baker/ Sean Levey), Eton Forever (Varian/ Callan), Mia´s Boy (Chris Dwyer/ Andrea Atzeni) and Decent Fella (Balding/ Jimmy Fortune), who was fourth in the race last year with several of today´s runners behind.