How Royal Ascot became the most important event of the summer
Words: Gentleman's Journal
Kicking off the summer calendar in style, Royal Ascot is the racing season’s social zenith. A font of repute and sophistication, the paddocks are set to attract over 300,000 visitors over the course of the week. Unsurprising, as the good stock in the enclosures is reciprocated on the field. With over £6.58milllion in the kitty, the finest thoroughbreds flock to the track in search of fame and fortune. Guaranteeing high-octane thrills and spills as jockey’s and horses alike empty the tank to get a nose across the line first.
(Photo: Longines)
Aside from the action, Royal Ascot boasts a heritage unrivalled by a bare few sporting events. In its 305th year, Ascot has established and entrenched itself as a British institution, neigh, icon. The Royal Meeting is a centrepiece in the social calendar and the proverbial World Cup final for those in the business of racing. The name itself hints at the history, it was Queen Anne herself that set the wheels in motion, or the horses to gallop, back in 1711.
The first race meeting, held that year, was open to horses over the age of six, no matter where they came from. The seven contenders behind the line were required to carry a weight of 12 stone and were competing for 100 guineas in an event that was then known as Her Majesty’s Plate. The winner? Well nobody knows anymore, the records are long lost and a name that should have been immortalised in sporting folklore, lost to an ancient administrative error.
That first race, though, bared little in semblance to the Ascot we watch today: a test of steel and stamina, a gruelling set of three heats, each four miles long – the length of the Grand National. Queen Anne’s ineffable contribution to the sport is rightfully still recognised today as Ascot opens, by tradition, with the Queen Anne Stakes.
(Photo: Longines)
After that haphazard start to life, albeit a sovereign haphazard, a more permanent racecourse was laid out by the gentleman William Lowen. A permanent building was then erected in 1794 before Parliament passed an Act of Enclosure in 1813 – making certain that the heath on which the course had been laid out would remain a public racecourse.
Like that first ever winner back in 1711, the origins of the Royal Meeting are unclear, stolen by the cruel mistress of time. It can be traced back, to an extent, to the first four-day meeting that took place in 1768. In its current guise though, the event has closer ties with the Gold Cup, introduced in 1807. The Gold Cup, of course, remaining a feature of today’s proceedings as the key race of the third day, or, as we all know it, Ladies’ Day.
A further Act of Parliament of 1913 established the Ascot Authority an entity that continues to manage the racecourse to this day and from its creation until 1945 the only racing that took place at Ascot was the Royal Meeting. Post war, however other events have since been allowed and the racing on show appropriately diversified to make good use of the track.
The monarchical connection remains strong however, even to this day. Since her first attendance at Royal Ascot in 1947, the Queen hasn’t missed a meeting. It’s firmly pencilled into her diary and she’s even had 22 winners, including a 2013 Gold Cup win, where she became the first reigning monarch to win the Royal Meeting’s most important race.
Royal Ascot, ultimately, has a heritage richer than that of its crowd in attendance and prize fund up for grabs, kicking off the social season with much deserved fanfare and an undisputed high.
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