Royal Ascot Highlights - King & Queen & The Gold Cup
23 June, 2023
The value of the new king and queen's bloodstock interests went up another notch here on Thursday as Desert Hero, a three-year-old bred by the late Queen Elizabeth, gave her son his first winner at the Royal meeting after a neck-and-neck struggle in the closing stages of the King George V Handicap.
Tom Marquand, the winning jockey, brought Desert Hero with a brave run between horses to grab the lead well inside the final furlong, and his mount then held the late challenge of Valiant King by a head.
Zara Tindall, the king's niece, was part of the royal party in the winner's enclosure as the king and queen received the trophy from the Duke of Kent and said the moment provoked mixed feelings for the family.
“It's bittersweet, isn't it?†Tindall said. “To think how proud and excited our grandmother would have been, the queen would have been. But to have a winner for Charles and Camilla, to keep that dream alive, was incredible. And what a race, asides all of that.
“It's a new excitement, isn't it? Like all those owners who have a horse here, having that dream, that hope, and actually fulfilling it. The horses are the main game here, that's why we get involved. We love them, the competition - and then the adrenaline when you win is indescribable.â€
The late queen had 24 winners at the Royal meeting, the most recent being Tactical, who took the Windsor Castle Stakes in June 2020 when the meeting was staged behind closed doors because of the Covid epidemic.
“It's fantastic, a great honour for all of us, and I'm thrilled they were here to witness it,†William Haggas, Desert Hero's trainer, said. “Desert Hero wasn't 6-4 favourite, so I think expectations were relatively low, but hopes were high, and it came good. It was a beautiful ride, a bit of a bob and a weave up the straight, but he made it and fair play to Tom.
“[The king and queen] have been looking forward to Royal Ascot for a long time and they hoped to have as many runners as possible. It's very important for horse racing, but it's also important that the king and queen enjoy it, which they clearly appear to do. Long may that continue.â€
In the early stages, there were obvious parallels with the 2021 Gold Cup, as Subjectivist and Joe Fanning, the winners two years ago, raced into a clear lead.
Stradivarius found trouble in running as he tried to make ground in that race, but Dettori was happy to sit well off the pace on Courage Mon Ami, making the fourth start of his career and his first in any Group race, never mind a Group One.
Subjectivist had been nursed back to race-fitness after suffering a career-threatening injury a few weeks after his Gold Cup victory, and he ran a fine race to still hold a narrow lead at the top of the straight. Coltrane, though, was not far behind, and he took over two out as Subjectivist started to tread water, only for Dettori to deliver Courage Mon Ami with a decisive run on the way to a three-quarter length success.
It was a ninth win in the race for Dettori, which means he will retire two short of Lester Piggott's all-time record, and a 79th win at the meeting.
“I didn't expect it,†he said. “The last five years I've had Stradivarius, so the pressure was on. This one I thought was a bit of a chancer coming from handicaps, but John [Gosden, the winner's trainer] was confident.
“I rode him cold [off the pace] and it just happened. I got the splits when I wanted to and he showed a turn of foot.
“The last half a furlong, I couldn't give in to Oisin [Murphy, on Coltrane]. I thought: ‘no, we've got this far, please keep going'.
“It's unbelievable, my last year, winning the Gold Cup. Myself, the king and Queen Camilla had a talk beforehand about his win [with Desert Hero earlier on the card] and my relationship with his mother, Queen Elizabeth. Then the next race I go on and win the Gold Cup and he presents the trophy. It's amazing, really amazing.
Courage Mon Ami is the third consecutive four-year-old to win the Gold Cup, after Subjectivist and Kyprios, and it is conceivable all three will be in the lineup next year, when Courage Mon Ami will be in need of a new jockey.
Gosden will not be short of applications when the time comes, but he took a moment to reflect on his long association with Dettori, as well as their brief falling-out over some of his rides at this meeting 12 months ago.
“He's had a phenomenal career,†Gosden said. “Thirty years we've been working together, on and off. We've had one argument in 30 years. How many marriages can say that?
“We patched that up after five days and were winning Group Ones in Deauville straight after that. We had a disagreement, that's fine, that's professional, and we kicked on after that. Look at the result today.â€
Courage Mon Ami set off as a well-backed 15-2 chance thanks to his jockey, but there was a huge result for the bookmakers when Valiant Force won the opening Norfolk Stakes at 150-1, equalling the record winning starting price for the meeting set by Nando Parrado in the Coventry Stakes three years ago.
It was a first winner at the meeting for the Amo Racing operation founded by the leading football agent Kia Joorabchian.
“We knew Valiant Force was a nice horse and I couldn't believe the price,†Adrian Murray, the winner's trainer, said. “It didn't make sense, I knew he was much better than that. It's the stuff of dreams.â€
