Cornelius Lysaght reflections on day two at Royal Ascot including Love's comeback win in the Prince of Wales's Stakes

She has become the darling of an adoring public, let alone the pun-loving media, and the Coolmore filly Love remains bang there in horse racing hearts after a scintillating all-the-way success over Audarya in the Group One Prince of Wales’s Stakes.

During a faultless three-year-old career, Love conquered all – okay, no more, for now – in the 1000 Guineas, and the Epsom and York stagings of the Oaks before wet weather and soft ground in Paris made her trainer Aidan O’Brien break off from an attempt at October’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

O’Brien, clearly exhilarated at equalling the Royal Ascot record of the late Sir Henry Cecil with his 75th victory, only decided to run the daughter of Galileo in a ‘race of the week’ clash with 2020 winner Lord North a few days previously.

However, the defection of Lord North because of the sun-baked Ascot going prompted fears that this could be a processional non-event.

Not so at all: the equally loveable, James Fanshawe-trained mare Audarya, successful at the Breeders' Cup in Keeneland, and with jockey William Buick wearing the green, yellow and red silks of Walter Swinburn’s widow Alison, had her own ideas.

And up the straight they stalked and harried the winner, but Love, ridden by Ryan Moore, clearly hated the prospect of defeat.

It was a breathless thriller, sending the 8,500 paying crowd – like day one, well down on the 12,000 permitted by Covid regulations – into full cry; the race of the week indeed.

Confirming that the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes back at Ascot in July – over an extra quarter-mile – and the Arc are top of her agenda, O’Brien said: "It is a pleasure and privilege to have a filly like her.

"She has all the key attributes of a Galileo. She was just really waiting for Ryan to grind her and say ‘come on’. I knew she was going to find for him, and she gives her all this filly.

"It is an unbelievable trait to be that tough and she has it in spades, and multiplied by ten. Whatever you want, she is there to answer it all the time."

Maybe not in the King George, but I can see Audarya popping up with more questions in the future.

Buick had more luck when Godolphin’s three-year-old Kemari, racing for only the third time, demonstrated himself a fine prospect with success in the Queen’s Vase.

And while the Royal Ascot stewards controversially suspended and fined Godolphin’s principal rider for his use of his whip on the surprise first-day winner Reshoun, the operation’s number one trainer Charlie Appleby was radiating much more love.

Appleby said: "William praised him highly after that [last time out] win at Yarmouth. I have to say I sat on the fence slightly and felt he was a horse who was progressing but was he progressing enough to be able to step up in today’s league?

"I said to William ‘this is your chance to go and tell us how good you are at being a judge now’ [and] the horse is definitely a horse who’s going the right way."

As Kemari was proving in the winter what Appleby described as a “challenging” project, he was castrated to calm him down, but as a gelding will not be permitted to take part in the natural target for a Queen’s Vase winner, the St Leger at Doncaster, which is pencilled in for stablemate Adayar, the Epsom Derby winner.

Instead, in a boost to the international aspect of Australia’s Melbourne Cup, for which potentially off-putting extra welfare-related conditions have been introduced for globetrotting challengers, the race that ‘stops a nation’ was mentioned for Kemari.

Appleby has tended to hog the Godolphin headlines of late but the operation’s other Newmarket-based trainer Saeed bin Suroor grabbed back some of the limelight when Real World galloped off with Royal Hunt Cup by a wide-margin – and despite being drawn to race on the supposedly unfavoured far side of the track.

Wednesday was another humid, occasionally sunny day but going-easing thunderstorms are forecast overnight which Stradivarius’ joint-trainer John Gosden has said are causing concern for him ahead of the seven-year-old’s attempt to emulate the great stayer Yeats with a fourth Gold Cup win – and at a fifth on the trot at Royal Ascot.

Frankie Dettori, jockey of ‘Strad’ and successful on the Gosdens-trained Indie Angel in the Duke of Cambridge Stakes, said he was nervous ahead of the history attempt, but “nerves are good”. He loves it, doesn’t he.

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