Talking Horses: Royal Ascot to defy odds by staging its first £1m races

Royal Ascot will stage its first £1m races next summer, when both the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and the Diamond Jubilee Stakes will be run for a seven-figure purse as part of a boost to the fund prize fund that will take the total for the meeting past £8m for the first time. Every race at Royal Ascot will be worth at least £95,000, while 16 of the 30 contests have had their prize money increased.

Related: Talking Horses: Saldier set to miss Leopardstown as Cheltenham looms

The two races chosen for the most significant upgrades have been popular with owners and trainers from overseas in recent years. The fund for the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, in which the Japanese mare Deirdre was a runner this year, rises by a third, from £750,000, while the prize for the Diamond Jubilee Stakes, a Group One sprint on the final day of the meeting which has attracted runners from countries including Australia, the United States and Singapore, has almost doubled, from £600,000.

The increases to Royal Ascot’s prize money comes at a time when many tracks are either freezing or reducing their contributions following the introduction of stake limits on betting shop FOBT machines earlier this year. This is expected to lead to a reduction in the number of betting shops, and therefore to racing’s income from betting shop media rights.

“These two races, which historically appeal to international horsemen, have been selected first as being likely to produce increased income from overseas betting and associated media/data rights,” Guy Henderson, Ascot’s chief executive, said on Tuesday. “Equally, there are so many six, and now seven-figure races staged around the world over these distances that we must be conscious of options open to our own locally-trained star horses.

The UK LBO [betting shop] media rights landscape and levy picture remains very challenging, which makes it difficult to plan beyond 2020.

Ludlow 12.30 Ballyellis 1.00 Duc Kauto 1.30 Liberty Bella 2.05 The Welsh Paddies 2.40 Tidal Flow 3.10 Those Tiger Feet 3.45 Sabrina

Lingfield 12.10 Global Hope 12.40 Holy Eleanor 1.10 Captain Jameson 1.45 Victory Bond 2.15 Mrs Ivy 2.50 Tacitly 3.20 Yasir

Haydock 12.50 Teescomponentstrig 1.20 Bally Conor 1.55 Champagne Mystery 2.25 Sunny Express 3.00 Speak Of The Devil (nb) 3.30 True Romance

Kempton 3.40 Drop Kick Murphi 4.10 Ayr Harbour 4.40 Royal Council 5.10 Lethal Lunch (nap) 5.40 Collide 6.10 Debbonair 6.40 Rangali Island 7.10 Purple Paddy

Tips by Greg Wood