Guide to Royal Ascot: The Meet’s Importance, How to Watch, Key Races
- May 3rd, 2022
- SEO Team
If you are interested in horse races and watched the Triple Crown’s races this year, another event you might be interested in is the “Royal Ascot”. In this blog, we will tell you all you need to know about one of the most royal and prestigious meeting of the year.
The History Of The Royal Ascot
The event is held every year in the town of Ascot in England on the Ascot racecourse. The Ascot Racecourse was founded by Queen Anne in 1711 and has gained recognition and support from 11 monarchs since then. It was called the Ascot summer race meeting at first, but then officially became the Royal week in 1911.
An interesting fact to note is that the Queen herself owns and breeds some of the horses present on the racecourse and shares a keen interest in this activity.
The Importance Of The Meet
This race meeting is a very important event for the English society and is almost compulsory to attend. If you visit the track during the event, it is highly likely you will see renowned people, like royalty, athletes, celebrities, and many others.
The reason this week is so important and unique for the high society of England is that the Queen herself makes an entrance in it, as part of a royal procession that follows the path of the track in carriages.
A lot of betting happens over the colour of her dress, and many fans worldwide tune into their TV screens to check who is riding in the procession, especially in the Queen’s carriage. It is quite obvious that a lot of the wins are from her horses, the most recent ones including Estimate and Tackle.
However, the meet isn’t all about the queen. The real stars are the horses, who are bred and trained throughout the year for this event. The race is not just restricted to horses from England, with people from all over Europe bring their racehorses to attend the meet, and some come even from the US. In fact, 2 horses from the US have won Group 1 races at the Royal Ascot in the past six years.
The Key Races
The Ascot racecourse sees 6 amazing races each of the 5 days, making it a grand total of 30 races for the whole event. The races are divided into 5 groups. The Group 1 races usually feature some great legends of horse racing, such as Frankel and Yeats. The races commence with the Queen Anne stakes which is a must at the event and the winner of this race earns a spot in the Breeders’ Cup DanDuel Mile. Sometimes there is a bit of alteration to the schedules and seven races are added instead of six.
How To Watch The Race?
If you belong to the English high class, own a racehorse that will participate in the vent, or are a royal from another country invited to the event, you can easily rent an event transportation service to take you to the event.
For horse racing fans around the world, NBC airs every day of the meet on its channels. Many other sports channels, such as TVG will also be covering the event and you can tune in to your favourite sports channel to enjoy the races.
There Is Lots To Do At The Racecourse
Even though the event is mostly focused on racing and horses, it offers so much more. You can enjoy some of the most premium champagne, wine and beer drinks. You can also feast upon some amazing food such as tacos, spring chicken, and some yummy, fine quality steaks from some of the best chefs in the world.
There are many enclosures for guests to view the races from. Even though some require a more formal dress code, the Windsor and Village enclosures have comparatively lenient requirements and have cocktail bars, live bars and live music, creating a very lively atmosphere that the guests can enjoy and have fun at.
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