Situated in the Royal County of Berkshire in South East England, adjoining Windsor Great Park, Ascot is arguably the most famous racecourse in Britain, if not the world. Since 2015, Ascot has been home to 13, or 36%, of the 36 Group 1 races in the British Flat racing calendar, eight of which are run during the celebrated, five-day ‘Royal Ascot’ meeting, staged annually in June.
The most recent additions to the Group 1 roster were the Commonwealth Cup, a six-furlong race for three-year-olds, which was added to the Royal Ascot programme in 2015, and the British Champions Sprint, which has been run, in various guises, since 1946, but was upgraded to the highest level in the same year. Thus, the British Champions Sprint became one of four Group 1 races run on ‘British Champions Day’, a one-day ‘championship’ meeting created, in 2011, as the culmination of the season-long British Champion Series, sponsored by Qatar Investment & Projects Development Holding Company (QIPCO).
The other Group 1 races run at the end-of-season, October fixture are the British Champions Fillies and Mares Stakes, over a mile and a half, the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, over a mile, and the Champion Stakes, over a mile and a quarter. Worth £1.1 million and £1.3 million in total prize money, respectively, the last-named pair are, in fact, the most valuable mile race in Europe and the most valuable all-aged race in Britain.
Aside from the Commonwealth Cup, the remaining seven Group 1 races run at Royal Ascot are the Queen Anne Stakes, the King’s Stand Stakes, the St. James’s Palace Stakes, the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the Gold Cup, the Coronation Stakes and the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes. Between Royal Ascot and British Champions Day, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, run over a mile and half in July, is another prestigious and valuable all-aged race, worth £1.2 million in prize money.