Royal Ascot is a five-day flat racing meeting held at Ascot in Berkshire every June. It is the most prestigious fixture in the British racing calendar, and it is as much a social and sartorial event as a sporting one.
Queen Anne’s course
The racecourse was founded in 1711 by Queen Anne, who spotted the open heath while out riding from Windsor Castle and judged it ideal for “horses to gallop at full stretch”. The first race, Her Majesty’s Plate, was run that August. The opening race of the modern meeting is still called the Queen Anne Stakes.
The course lies about six miles from Windsor Castle, which is why the royal connection has never lapsed.
The Royal Procession
Every afternoon at two o’clock, the King and Queen and their guests are driven down the straight mile in horse-drawn landaus, escorted by outriders, to the sound of the national anthem. The tradition dates from 1825 and George IV.
The crowd stands. It is, for a great many attendees, the moment of the day.
The dress code
Genuinely enforced, and the subject of a published document that is updated annually. Requirements vary by enclosure:
Royal Enclosure
- Men: black or grey morning dress with waistcoat and tie, a top hat, and black shoes. No cravats.
- Women: a dress or skirt of modest length, straps of at least one inch, and a hat — or a headpiece with a base of at least four inches. Fascinators are not permitted here.
Queen Anne Enclosure
Less formal but still specified: a suit and tie for men, and a hat or headpiece for women. Fascinators are allowed.
Stewards do turn people away, and hire firms near the course do a brisk trade in emergency morning coats.
The hats
Ascot millinery is a spectacle in its own right and is covered extensively in the British press, particularly on Ladies’ Day on the Thursday. Hats range from the elegant to the structurally ambitious, and the more extravagant creations are built specifically to be photographed.
The whole thing sits somewhere between a fashion event and a competitive sport, and nobody involved pretends otherwise.
The racing
Easy to lose sight of, and genuinely first-rate. Ascot stages eight Group 1 races over the week, more than any other meeting in the world:
- The Gold Cup on Ladies’ Day — a stayers’ race over two and a half miles, and the meeting’s centrepiece since 1807.
- The Queen Anne Stakes, the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the Diamond Jubilee and others.
Elizabeth II was a serious and knowledgeable owner and breeder, and her horses won at the meeting 24 times. Her victory in the Gold Cup with Estimate in 2013 — the first time a reigning monarch had won it — produced a reaction from the crowd that had nothing to do with deference.
The singing
After racing on each day, crowds gather around the bandstand for a communal singalong — Land of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia, and whatever else the band can manage over several thousand people who have been drinking champagne since eleven. It is a great deal less formal than the morning, and considerably louder.