- Money washes through Royal Ascot throughout the week at glamorous meet
- Step into Ascot and you would wonder there are complaints about the sport
- Ascot appeals to all and there are people without the deepest pockets enjoying it
In that special space reserved for the winners, another dream had just come true. A tough little filly called Cercene had just won The Coronation Stakes, one of Royal Ascot’s Championship races, and her connections were beside themselves.
‘It’s a lifetime’s ambition to have a Group One winner,’ said Joseph Murphy, a 70-year-old from Tipperary who has been training horses since 1977. ‘This is 50 years of work – that’s what it is. It’s just a whole group of people together. This is heaven on earth.’
Money could not have bought the feeling that washed over Murphy on Friday. Success at this meeting hits differently compared to any other time of year, as this is the place to be – and be seen.
But money, though, is a theme that washes through the week. Racing finds itself in a tricky position at present, with a number of issues to address and problems to solve, but step into Ascot and you would wonder there are complaints about the sport.
Ascot, you see, appeals to all. At one end of the spectrum, you have an influential owners such as Kia Joorabchian, the successful football agent, going head-to-head with the American financial whizz John Stewart at auction on Monday evening.
The Goffs London Sale, staged in Kensington Gardens, kick starts Royal Ascot week, with high rollers from around the world coming in to buy horses that ready to run and hold entries at the meeting.
Joorabchian and Stewart went head-to-head in dramatic fashion for Lot 10, a beautiful colt called Ghostwriter, with the former coming out on top. Ghostwriter will run for a first prize of £141,775 in Saturday’s Hardwucke Stakes. He cost Joorabchian £2million.
You don’t need pockets that deep, however, to get the unbridled joy of an Ascot win. Havana Hurricane blew his rivals away in the Windsor Castle Stakes on Wednesday and had been bought for £9,000 by his trainer Eve Johnson Houghton. His bounty for winning was £62,381.
This provides the best example of the spectrum that Royal Ascot takes in. It is for everyone and you can enjoy it, however much you want to pay.
Of course it is possible to pay through the nose. Entry into the Queen Anne Enclosure is £110 and, on your way to it, you will walk past pop-up stalls from luxury watchmaker Longines and bespoke fashion designer LK Bennett.
The outfits racegoers are wearing show that no expense has been spared, with gentlemen applying little luxurious flourishes to their Morning Suits by buying floral buttonholes from a trader on Ascot High Street.
The charge is at your discretion but it was easy to see crisp £20 notes being tendered for the service.
Yet it’s not all bank-breaking stuff. One gentleman on X posted that his tie for the meeting, pink and purple to match his waistcoat, had cost £1.70 from a local charity shop.
‘You have 300,000 people over five days; everyone from the King of England to someone who has saved all of their expendable income over the last few months,’ said Ascot CEO Fliss Barnard during an interview with the Sunday Telegraph ahead of the meeting. ‘There’s an ecosystem of getting the product right, the pricing and how you’re telling people about it.’
Guinness costs £7.80 a pint, in line with what you would pay at Cheltenham, Aintree or Newmarket (courses that are owned by The Jockey Club); Whispering Angel, the rose wine that is enormously popular, will set you back £75 for a bottle, while a bottle of Moet & Chandon champagne is £100. All bars have been doing a roaring trade.
Not that you have needed alcohol to combat the raging temperatures: there are 16 hydration stations around Ascot and free bottles of water have been given away at the end of the day to keep racegoers cool.
The customer experience is key. Barnard, a 42-year-old mother-of-two who once worked with West Ham, makes the point about an ecosystem and she is right: you can bring a picnic into the centre of the course, open from Thursday to Saturday, and spend as much or as little as you want.
A ticket to the Heath enclosure is £45 and when you compare that to other sporting events, it is impossible not to see the value. The quality of the sport, which is what it is all about, is relentlessly high, with superstars emerging from all angles.
It costs Ascot £30million to stage the event but the return is exceptional, as between 70 and 80 per cent of their annual turnover is generated. The most recent financial figures saw Ascot turnover £110.9million, so it illustrates the importance.
Another aspect to emphasise is that £200million loan that they took out in 2005 to build the stand that takes your breath away – one American visitor on Wednesday stood and looked at it from the parade ring for five minutes in awe – has been paid back.
Study the figures long enough and it is enough to make you dizzy but one thing is true: the buzz it provides, the memories it creates is on another level. Murphy called “heaven” – he wouldn’t be alone in speaking that way.
