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Is it getting harder to win at Royal Ascot after top yards dominate the week?

Horse Racing

Sat June 20, 2026 · 2h ago

Rory King takes stock of the final day of action at Royal Ascot after posing the question is it getting more difficult to win there?

Is it getting harder to win at Royal Ascot?

The current set of 35 races at the meeting was adopted in 2021, with the number of different stables represented by winners across the week being broadly similar for four years from there at 26, 23, 25 and 25.

There was a drop to 21 last year, though, and this year saw a further reduction to just 17 (fewer than half the number of races), and that despite a record number of runners across the week.

It seems the biggest stables are targeting the meeting more and more and, with the biggest-spending owners increasingly gravitating towards a smaller number of stables, the situation seems to be heading in a similar direction to at the Cheltenham Festival. Whether that’s a positive situation for the sport is very much up for debate.

Saturday's action

Giavellotto edges out Kalpana in a thriller

The Hardwicke is a race that seems to get deeper and deeper all the time, no surprise really given the meeting, the structure (a Group 2 but with no penalties for Group 1 winners) and the prize fund (£250k).

This was really a de facto Group 1 and it lived up to the billing, just a short head separating Giavellotto and Kalpana at the line, with Goliath likely to have been very close to them but for Soumillon losing an iron late in the piece.

We’ve got Giavellotto running to his best of 124, a figure he’s now run to on three occasions, including when overcoming lots of trouble to win the Hong Kong Vase in 2024, a race that looks set to be his target once again.

Kalpana was very slightly below her best by our reckoning – perhaps not helped by hitting the front two furlongs out in a race run at a good tempo – even though she’s now finished behind Giavellotto on all three occasions she’s met him. She should still be a key player in the King George next month once again, with the Graffard pair Goliath and Calandagan – the last two winners of the race – likely to be back, along with Jan Brueghel who didn’t get the rub of the green here and whose chances of landing next month’s race could rest on his stable turning it into a war of attrition, firepower from the 3-y-o ranks perhaps needed on that front.

The QEII Jubilee Stakes somehow saw an even narrower winning margin than the Hardwicke in what was a truly international finish – the home-trained winner edging out horses from Japan, Australia and France, with a Danish raider not far behind.

Given the congested photo finish, it’s hard to think that either Satono Reve or Joliestar were at their best (probably to the tune of 4 or 5lb), and provides little to no clarity on a sprinting scene sorely crying out for some (Tuesday’s King Charles III Stakes had seen a finish almost as tight).

In fairness to the winner, he’s only four, has run just seven times in his life (yet to finish out of the first two when completing) and must be a tough cookie to come back from a bad fall at York in the autumn. Perhaps he can do better yet having only just arrived at the top table of sprinting, and he showed a fine attitude to put his head in front of the two international big guns on the line.

Set against a string of photo finishes, Orthodox streaking clear in a Norfolk Stakes teed up by three Wesley Ward fillies set him apart on the day and, when the dust has settled, he may even be the highest-rated 2-y-o of the week.

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