Valiant Force wins the 2023 Norfolk at odds of 150-1Credit: Edward Whitaker
Back to the day three action, for which we had entries and confirmations earlier, and I’ve been doing some digging into how many favourites have won our seven Thursday contests in the last decade.
Royal Ascot is arguably the trickiest week of the year to work out a winner so unsuprisingly this does not make pretty reading for favourite backers.
No favourite has won the Norfolk since 11-4 South Central for trainer Howard Johnson in 2008. We’ve also had some huge-priced winners in recent times with The Ridler striking at 50-1 in 2022 before Valiant Force became the joint-biggest priced Royal Ascot winner at 150-1 the following year.
Not a great omen for Charles Darwin
Only one winning favourite in the last ten years, and that was a joint one courtesy of Secret State for Godolphin in 2022. However, only three of the last ten winners have been bigger than 9-1 so the punters do have a sporting chance.
Despite smaller fields and some more obvious form lines to go on than the previous two races, only two of the last ten Ribblesdale winners have been favourites. Ryan Moore has partnered all four of Aidan O’Brien’s winners in the last decade, although only Even Song in 2016 was favourite and the 13-2 and 12-1 about Warm Heart and Port Fairy the last two years has provided plenty of value.
Serenity Prayer is the 3-1 favourite this year but seven other fillies are priced at 10-1 or shorter and this could be a tricky puzzle to solve.
A much easier puzzle to solve, with six winning favourites in the last ten years. That includes three wins for the brilliant Stradivarius and Kyprios’s two victories. Since Trip To Paris won at 12-1 in 2015, no winner has returned at a double-figure price and there have plenty of positive noises about Illinois since Kyprios was retired.
Docklands – the classic Group horse in a handicap – ended an 11-year losing run of favourites in the Britannia when he struck at odds of 6-1 in 2023. With 30 runners and a host of unexposed three-year-olds charging up Ascot’s straight course, there has unsuprisingly been some big-priced winners with 25-1, 28-1, 18-1 and 14-1 shots scoring in the last eight years.
Mohaafeth (11-8 in 2021) and Time Test (15-8 in 2015) were both well backed favourites but they are the only ones in the last ten years of the Hampton Court. However, the biggest winning price in that time is 7-1, which has been the SP of the last three winners.
Detain is a 7-2 chance in the early markets this year.
English Oak was a hugely popular winner for punters last year to remarkably become the first winning favourite in the race’s history. Before that, 13 consecutive winners had returned at odds of 12-1 or bigger with one at 50-1 and two at 33-1. No favourite had troubled the winner’s enclosure since the race was first run in 2002, although that does include a five-year gap when the race was not run between 2015 and 2019.