Royal Ascot: day one, Queen Anne

The Royal Ascot meeting which starts today and goes on until Saturday is the best race meeting of the whole year and today´s card is well up to standard with three Group One races. No other meeting in the world would be bold enough to start off with the main feature, but that is the case here with the card opening with the Queen Anne Stakes for older milers at 15.30 CET.

This is a really hot race with Toronado (Richard Hannon/ Richard Hughes) clear top-rated and the obvious favourite. He was just beaten in the St. James Palace here last year and went on to win the Sussex Stakes, form which is easily the best in the race. However he has not run since finishing last in the International in York last August, which could be a Problem

His main opponents are the French-trained Anodin (Freddie Head/ Olivier Peslier) and Irish-trained Verrazano (Aidan and Joseph O´Brien). The former is a brother of Goldikova, who won this race in 2010 and his trainer certainly knows the time of day with these top milers. His form so far is not really good enoiugh, but Head is convinced that he is still improving, and this puts him in here with an excellent each-way chance. Verrazano was trained by Todd Pletcher in the USA last year and put up some strong performances; on his first start for O´Brien he was noted running on well when third in the Lockinge, behind Tullius (Andrew Balding/ Jimmy Fortune) We are sure that he will reverse those placings now and he looks a big danger to the favourite with the O´Brien stable now back in top form.