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There are races at Royal Ascot that fill you with awe because of their history. Some fill you with tension because of their calibre. Then, on the final afternoon of the meeting, there is the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes, a race that manages both, and sends sixty thousand people home with the thunder of the fastest horses in the world still in their chests.

But to understand what this race is today, you must understand what it has been.

It Started Simply Enough

The year was 1868. The race was called the All-Aged Stakes, a no-nonsense title that did exactly what it said on the tin. Thoroughbreds of any age, lined up over six furlongs. The inaugural winner was a horse called Laneret. In the polite, Victorian world of Ascot, nobody was predicting that this modest sprint contest would one day become the joint richest prize of the entire week.

For nearly sixty years, the race ran under that original name before receiving its first rebrand in 1926: the Cork and Orrery Stakes, in honour of the 9th Earl of Cork and Orrery, who had served as Master of the Buckhounds during the previous century. It was a name that carried the faint, slightly dusty grandeur of the British establishment, and it stuck around for over seven decades.

A Queen Changes Everything

The race’s modern life began with a queen.

In 2002, as Britain celebrated the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne, the Cork and Orrery Stakes was renamed the Golden Jubilee Stakes and simultaneously elevated to Group 1 status. That second detail matters enormously. Group 1 is the highest classification in thoroughbred racing. It is the mark of a race that the sport considers the very best, and its award here was long overdue recognition of the world-class sprinters that had been contesting it for years.

Then came the Diamond Jubilee Stakes in 2012. Then the Platinum Jubilee Stakes in 2022. Each new name, a new chapter, the race keeping pace with a reign that seemed, year by year, both timeless and quietly extraordinary.

When Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, the decision was made to give the race a permanent name in her honour. Since 2023, it has been the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes. Not a temporary rebranding for a milestone, but a lasting tribute. The race belongs to her now, forever.

The Moment That Defined a Generation

If you had to choose a single image to capture what this race can do to people, what it can mean, you would choose the summer of 2012.

Australia sent us Black Caviar that year. Twenty-four starts. Twenty-four wins. Unbeaten, immaculate, a mare of legendary status back home. She crossed the world to run at Royal Ascot in the Diamond Jubilee Stakes, and the crowd that greeted her was unlike anything the straight course had seen in years.

What followed was almost unbearable. Black Caviar appeared to be idling as she neared the finish. The gap closed. Sixty thousand people held their breath. She held on by a head, and the roar that followed was equal parts relief and pure, incredulous joy.

Her trainer, Peter Moody, later admitted he had never been so nervous at a racecourse in his life. That is what this race does to people.

The Final Act

The Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes is the closing Group 1 of the Royal Ascot meeting, and jointly the richest race of the week at £1,000,000. It is run over six furlongs on the straight course, the very same stretch of turf used to open the meeting for the Queen Anne Stakes on Tuesday. Something is pleasing in that symmetry: the same ground, bookending five days of racing, completing the circuit.

Open to horses aged four and older, it pulls in the finest sprinters from Britain, Ireland, France, and far beyond. It is part of the QIPCO British Champions Series. For the very best sprinters in Europe, there is no bigger prize.

The final day. The final race. Whatever happens, it will be worth staying for.

What It Would Mean to Win

By the time the runners load into the stalls, Royal Ascot has shed most of its formality. The hush of the earlier days, the top hats, the Royal Procession, has given way to something looser and louder. This is the final Group 1 race of the meeting, and the crowd that lines the straight knows it. Whatever has happened across the week, good bets and bad, this is the last chance to be part of something.

For the connections of the horses involved, what’s at stake goes well beyond the £1,000,000 on offer. A Group 1 win at Royal Ascot carries a weight that follows a horse for the rest of its career, and a trainer or jockey for the rest of theirs. It is the kind of result that gets mentioned first in any biography, the line that opens every future profile. For an owner who has bred or bought a horse with exactly this race in mind, it can be the reward for years of patience and planning, settled in just over a minute of racing.

Six furlongs, dead straight, no hiding place. Whatever a horse has, it will be laid bare in front of a crowd that has been waiting all week for exactly this. Win here, and there is a good chance your name ends up in an article like this one, sitting alongside Black Caviar, Blue Point, and Khaadem, years from now.

Three Races Worth Remembering

Black Caviar, 2012. Australia’s unbeaten superstar arrived at Royal Ascot with a perfect record of 24 wins from 24 starts, carrying the weight of a nation’s expectations into the Diamond Jubilee Stakes. What followed was one of the most dramatic moments in the meeting’s history: Black Caviar appeared to idle in the final strides, the gap closing with every stride, before holding on by the narrowest of margins, a head. The relief was visceral. Her trainer, Peter Moody, later said he had never felt such nerves at a racecourse. It remains one of the defining images of modern Royal Ascot.

Blue Point, 2019. Few sprinters have had a Royal Ascot quite like Blue Point’s. In 2018, the Godolphin star won the King’s Stand Stakes over five furlongs. He returned in 2019, retained that title, and went on to win the Diamond Jubilee Stakes over six furlongs as well, completing the rare double of the two top-level sprints at the meeting in the same week. That feat demanded blistering pace and the stamina to back it up just days later, and it remains a standout achievement in the race’s modern history. A reminder of how rare genuine sprinting versatility is at this level.

Khaadem, 2023 and 2024. The first running under the race’s current permanent name produced one of its biggest shocks: Khaadem, trained by Charlie Hills, won at odds of 80-1 under Jamie Spencer, making steady headway from off the pace before pouncing late to deny long-time leader Swingalong. He returned twelve months later and did it again, this time at 14-1 under Oisin Murphy, with the same sustained finish that had carried him to victory the year before. Back-to-back winners are rare enough. Back-to-back winners from an 80-1 shot are rarer still.