Royal Ascot: Queen Anne Stakes

Royal Ascot begins today and the first race is traditionally the Quieen Anne Stakes over a mile at 15.30, named after the monarch who built the racecourse over 300 years ago. This is always a great race - who can forget Frankel beating Excelebration by 11 lengths in 2012 or Goldikova winning by a neck from Paco Boy in 2010- but this time it looks the best race of the whole week. We have two superstars - Able Friend (John Moore/ Joao Moreira) from Hong Kong and Solow (Freddie Head/ Maxime Guyon) from France, both of whom have won their last 6 races and are the two highest-rated milers in the world. Then we also have the two star milers from the Richard Hannon stable, Night of Thunder (James Doyle) and Toormore (Richard Hughes), first and second recently in the Lockinge, with Here Comes When (Andrea Balding/ Jim Crowley) 6th and Cougar Mountain (Aidan O´Brien/ Ryan Moore)11th, as well as another French raider Esoterique (André Fabre/ Pierre-.Charles Boudot). Night of Thunder beat Kingman in last year´s 2,000 Guineas, whjch is excellent form and has beaten Toormore on the four occasions they have met, although there has never been much in it. It is unusual to see the O´Brien and Fabre runners as total´outsiders here, but it will be a shock if they can win, and basically the race revolves around the two favourites- and in particular Able Friend, who has looked sensational in Asia. The questions are: can he reproduce that form on the other side of the earth- and can he cope with Ascot´s straight mile, very different from the much easier track, and round a bend, in HK? Ascot has gone to great effort to attract the world´s best horses to run at this meeting and they have succeeded here; we hope that Able Friend wins to justify all their efforts.