Hanson: Reviewing my 12 years of handicapping Royal Ascot

The 2023 Royal Ascot meeting will be my 13th at offering selections on Thursday and Friday of the five-day fixture, which runs from June 20-24. My colleague Kellie Reilly and I began covering Royal Ascot in 2011, tag-teaming to provide a Daily Selections tipsheet that was initially sold at Brisnet.com. After a few years, we began offering our insights on a complimentary basis at Brisnet, and they have since gravitated to their permanent home on the TwinSpires Edge.

For me, Royal Ascot is one of the most anticipated weeks of the racing year. It’s an intellectual handicapping challenge par excellence, affording an American like myself the opportunity to match wits against bettors in the U.K. and around the world, many of whom have the advantage of having their finger on the pulse of European racing on a more frequent basis. With generally large and competitive fields, the rewards for being right can be extremely lucrative.  

As intellectually stimulating, fun, and colorful as Royal Ascot is, it’s also a pressure cooker. Concentrating exclusively on Group stakes and omitting handicaps (which requires a significant time investment and a skillset I have not yet attempted to hone), my handicapping success or failure is determined by the results of a mere eight races over two days.

As many files and blogs have been lost to history, I had long ago given up hope of reconstructing a complete record of my winning Thursday and Friday selections over the past dozen years. However, through intense prowling of various hard drive and email records over the past nine months or so, I’ve come up with what I believe is a very accurate table of winners selected on my annual two-day allotment.

What follows is an effort at transparency, and also an opportunity for me to discern trends and make noteworthy observations about my selection-making process. Please note these are results of my Thursday and Friday selections only and do not account for published spot plays on other days of the meet I’ve made over the years. I’ve had varying success trespassing on Kellie Reilly’s turf on the other days, but attempts at such have been highly infrequent and those records are very much incomplete.

Royal Ascot Selections Chart

YEAR	RACE	WINNER	U.K. ODDS	U.S. PAYOFF
2011	Ribblesdale	Banimpire	3-1*	NA
	Albany	Samitar	16-1	NA
2012	Ribblesdale	Princess Highway	17-2	NA
	Tercentenary	Energizer	15-2	NA
	Albany	Newfangled	7-4*	NA
	Queen’s Vase	Estimate	3-1*	NA
2013	Albany	Kiyoshi	8-1	NA
2014	Tercentenary	Cannock Chase	7-4*	NA
	Gold Cup	Leading Light	10-11*	NA
2015	Albany	Illuminate	4-1	NA
	King Edward VII	Balios	3-1	NA
2016	Ribblesdale	Even Song	15-8*	NA
	Gold Cup	Order of St George	10-11*	NA
	Commonwealth Cup	Quiet Reflection	7-4*	NA
	Coronation	Qemah	6-1	NA
2017	Commonwealth Cup	Caravaggio	5-6*	NA
2018	Commonwealth Cup	Eqtidaar	12-1	NA
2019	Norfolk	A’Ali	5-1	$13.70
	Gold Cup	Stradivarius	1-1*	$3.60
	Albany	Daahyeh	4-1*	$12.50
	Commonwealth Cup	Advertise	8-1	$17.50
2020	Jersey	Molatham	11-2	$13.90
	Gold Cup	Stradivarius	4-5*	$3.00
	Norfolk	The Lir Jet	9-2	$14.50
2021	Norfolk	Perfect Power	14-1	$31.60
	King Edward VII	Alenquer	15-8*	$4.20
2022	Norfolk	The Ridler	50-1	$90.70
	Hampton Court	Claymore	7-1	$14.80
	Commonwealth Cup	Perfect Power	7-2*	$6.80

*Favorite

Royal Ascot Betting History Takeaways

The first thing to note is I’ve made selections for 97 races on Thursdays and Fridays since 2011. There was an additional Group race in 2017, so I selected nine races that year. All have been Group events, with one exception; in the pandemic year of 2020, Day 3 of Royal Ascot had just two Group races scheduled, so I also ventured an opinion (a mistake, as it turned out, and one not to be repeated) on the Chesham, a listed event for two-year-olds. There was still a grand total of eight races selected that year.

• From those 97 races, I have selected the winner in 29 (29.9%).
  
  
• Given my desire to stand against favorites whenever possible, I’m somewhat miffed that 15 of my 29 winning selections were the betting favorite, based on U.K. odds (access to U.S. payoffs before 2019 are limited, thus I’m obliged to use U.K. odds for stats below). On the plus side, only five of the 15 were at even-money or less, while four were at 3-1 or higher.
  
  
• Based solely on U.K. odds and the minimum the horses would have paid if the price were the same in a U.S. pari-mutuel pool, my ROI on the 97 races would be $4.43 for every $2 wagered to win.
  
  
• My selections on Thursdays and Fridays have shown a flat-bet profit in 10 of the 12 years, including the last five in succession. My worst year was clearly 2017, when the odds-on Caravaggio (Commonwealth Cup) was my only winner among nine races. My other losing year was 2014, when two short-priced winners out of eight weren’t enough.
  
  
• While welcome, my success in the two-year-old features astounds me. I’ve tabbed the last four winners of the Norfolk, including two long-priced ones. It’s been a perfect race to hold a contrarian view, as no post-time favorite has won it since 2008.
  
  
• In the early years, the Albany for two-year-old fillies was my best race, though it must be noted that three of my five winning selections also happened to be post-time favorites.
  
  
• The Gold Cup, the meet centerpiece over 2 1/2 miles, is not a race you should expect to make a killing on. All four of my winners were sent off at even-money or less, while favorites have won eight of the last 12 runnings.
  
  
• I generally find the Commonwealth Cup, the relatively new six-furlong sprint for three-year-old colts and fillies, truly baffling when I first sit down to handicap it every year. Despite that, it’s been a consistently good race for me. I’ve selected five of the eight winners since its inauguration in 2015, and it would have been six had Dragon Symbol not been disqualified from the win in 2021.
  
  
• From a purely personal standpoint, I’m highly disappointed in my record in some of my favorite races of the week. That includes the two 1 1/2-mile features for three-year-olds: the Ribblesdale for fillies (3-for-11) and the King Edward VII for colts and geldings (2-for-11). I’m especially embarrassed about my record in the Coronation (1-for-11), arguably the deepest and most competitive race for three-year-old filly milers in Europe all season. I’d much prefer it be a race I have a great feel for, but it simply hasn’t worked out that way.

I’ve perhaps jinxed myself ahead of next week by rehashing past glories in this space, but I very much look forward to sifting through the Thursday and Friday cards of Royal Ascot week. Obviously, past performance does not guarantee future results, but I’ll be working hard to ensure that it does.