With everything else going on during this week’s Royal Ascot action, it might get relatively overlooked how Aidan O’Brien is about to become the great event’s most successful trainer ever.
The Irishman starts Tuesday’s action needing a single winner to tie Sir Michael Stoute’s all-time record of 82 winners.
Since both the Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Paddington (St James’s Palace Stakes) and River Tiber (Coventry Stakes) hold first-rate chances on Tuesday, as well as O’Brien’s status as favourite to be leading trainer for a 12th time, it looks a matter of when and not if another landmark falls to him.
The landmarks have been falling aplenty but, considering Ascot’s iconic status extends far beyond the racing world, it represents a colossal prospect for a figure who is still only 53 and who first struck at the meeting with Harbour Master in the 1997 Coventry.
Irish racing going all ‘béal bocht’ about prizemoney a hard sell ... and even harder listen
Irish horse Alphonse Le Grande reinstated as Newmarket Cesarewitch winner a month later
Ex-trainer says Horse Racing Ireland response to plan for retired racehorses is ‘discouraging’
Consolidation of Irish racing’s charity sector urged by injured jockeys’ body
O’Brien’s sons Joseph and Donnacha will also saddle runners over the five days when British flat racing famously dons its best bib and tucker in front of a rapt if sometimes bemused global audience.
Saturday’s retitled Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes is a reminder of how this week is the first Royal Ascot since its greatest and most famous fan passed away.
Given the late queen’s passion for the game supplied automatic prestige, every move made by her successor is likely to get parsed for significance.
That the extreme Animal Rising Group, who disrupted the Grand National in April, and tried to do the same at the Derby earlier this month, plan to look for more attention this week, underlines how the old game isn’t everyone’s cup of Earl Grey.
Inevitably, security has had to be beefed up to try and cut off potential protests before they constitute a threat to horse and rider.
The memory of how one protester got on to the track at Epsom shortly after the Derby started was a stark reminder of how vulnerable the sport’s biggest stages are to disruption.
Ascot’s profile makes it a ripe target, especially with the famous royal colours on view in the sixth race when they will be worn by no less a recognisable figure than Frankie Dettori.
This is the Italian rider’s final Royal Ascot and his every move this week will be viewed through the prism of that ‘F’ word.
Only Lester Piggott has ridden more Royal Ascot winners than Dettori’s career tally of 77. One of his best rides this week comes in the opening Queen Anne Stakes aboard Inspiral. Success there could set the tone for a momentous last hurrah for racing’s greatest showman.
No amount of sentiment however has dislodged Ryan Moore from favouritism in betting to be top jockey.
With O’Brien’s might behind him, the Englishman, almost a cartoon polar opposite to Dettori in public image, is odds-on to leading the rider standings for a tenth time.
Moore is only four behind his friend and rival in career victories at the meeting and a repeat of his record nine wins in a week in 2015 could also see him achieve his own landmark tally.
Ascot’s cosmopolitan appeal is highlighted by a considerable international presence this week with a pair of Australian sprinters joined by a US hope in the King’s Stand Stakes on Day One. From 40 Royal Ascot runners there have been seven Australian-trained winners, five of them in the King’s Stand.
Not much went right at the meeting a year ago for America’s top rider, Irad Ortiz, but he’s back for another try on Wesley Wards’s Twilight Gleaming. One of Australia’s top jockeys, James McDonald, is on the big Aussie hope, Coolangotta.
Mooneista is the sole Irish hope for the big speed test and there is nothing from this country in the Queen Anne.
Despite that, there is enough potential among 15 starters trained in Ireland on Tuesday to provoke hopes the best could be saved to first.
An eagerly anticipated clash of the Guineas winners takes place in the St James’s Palace which O’Brien hopes to win for a record-extending ninth time.
Paddington rose from relative obscurity to secure classic glory at the Curragh and takes on the Newmarket hero Chaldean in a race also containing the French Guineas runner-up Isaac Shelby.
Dettori faces a potential quandary from stall one on Chaldean and in a game of inches that might prove decisive in Paddington’s favour.
A bumper field of 22 line up for the Coventry with racing’s grapevine buzzing about stable confidence behind River Tiber.
Since O’Brien has won the Coventry eight more times since Harbour Master, no one understands better what’s required for the prized two-year old event.
On Thursday, Willie Mullins will try to make his own history by becoming the first to saddle the winners of both the Cheltenham and Ascot Gold Cups in the same year. Echoes In Rain is his big hope in that and that dual-purpose theme could propel jump racing’s dominant figure to more success on Tuesday.
Runner-up to Coltrane in last year’s Ascot Stakes, Bring On The Night is likely to be very short price for the same race this time.
Mullins’s 2022 Triumph Hurdle winner Vauban was previously a Listed winner on the flat in France and could be a handicap blot in the finale.
It is less exalted fare at Wexford’s all steeplechase programme on Tuesday but Mullins has a trio of runners there too. Jessica Harrington, doubly represented at Ascot, puts first-time cheekpieces on Changing The Rules in the first at Wexford.
