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There is something almost ceremonial about the way Royal Ascot begins. The Royal Procession moves down the course, top hats are doffed, and the crowd, some 70,000 strong, settles into the pageantry of it. Then, as the carriages clear and the afternoon properly begins, the first race is called.

It is always the Queen Anne Stakes, and it could not be anything else.

A Queen, a Heath, and a Happy Accident

The story of this race begins not with a race, but with a ride. In 1711, Queen Anne, out on horseback near Windsor Castle, came upon a stretch of flat, open heathland and declared that it looked an ideal spot for horses to gallop at full stretch.

Within weeks, the first race meeting at Ascot Heath was held. The sport had found one of its great homes.

The race that now bears her name did not follow immediately. It was first run in 1840 under the rather uninspiring title of the Trial Stakes, 129 years after that royal ride. Its first winner was Flambeau, a bay colt owned by the Duke of Rutland, who made a small piece of history by coming back to win the race again the very next year. The Trial Stakes name stuck until 1929, and the race was formally renamed the Queen Anne Stakes in 1930, a belated but fitting tribute to the woman who started it all.

From Trial Stakes to the Summit of the Sport

For much of its early life, the Queen Anne held a respectable but unremarkable place in the calendar. When the modern pattern race classification arrived in 1971, it was made a Group 3. A promotion to Group 2 followed in 1984, as the quality of horse drawn to the race began to match its growing reputation.

The defining change came in 2003, when the race was raised to Group 1, the top rung of flat racing. At the same time, the minimum age for runners was lifted to four, sharpening the contest into what it is today: a championship for the best milers in training, rather than a proving ground for three-year-olds still finding their way.

The Day Frankel Made Time Stop

Every race of real standing has its defining moment. For the Queen Anne, it came on a Tuesday afternoon in June 2012, and nobody who was there has quite got over it.

Frankel, trained by the great Sir Henry Cecil and ridden by Tom Queally, was already a horse apart. But what he produced that afternoon was something else. He moved through the field on the Ascot straight mile with an ease that bordered on the contemptuous, putting the result beyond doubt while still, somehow, looking well within himself.

The crowd’s response, a kind of stunned, disbelieving roar, said everything that needed saying.

The Test the Straight Mile Sets

The Queen Anne is a Weight for Age contest on Ascot’s straight mile, which means no draw advantage, no turning, and nowhere to hide: a mile of unforgiving Berkshire turf, and the best milers in training asked to settle the argument.

The first half of the race is where it is quietly won and lost. The straight mile at Ascot has a subtle rise and fall that catches horses out if they idle early, and the very best travel it with a fluency that makes the whole thing look unhurried, right up until the moment it very clearly is not.

A winner of the Queen Anne is not just a Group 1 winner. They are the horse that opened Royal Ascot. That, in its own way, means something.

Three Races Worth Remembering

Frankel, 2012. Trained by the late, great Sir Henry Cecil, Frankel is the finest racehorse of the modern era. In 2012 he took his field apart by eleven lengths over the straight mile, a performance that earned a Timeform rating of 147, still the highest the firm has ever awarded. Ridden by Tom Queally, it was arguably the most breathtaking display Royal Ascot has seen. Retired to stud, he has quickly become the premier sire in the Northern Hemisphere, with more Classic winners than any of his rivals.

Baaeed, 2022. The world’s top-ranked horse at the time, Baaeed arrived unbeaten in seven starts and produced a performance to match the billing. Trained by William Haggas and ridden by his regular partner Jim Crowley, he was the nearest thing the sport had seen to Frankel in the ten years between them, stretching his unbeaten run to eight. He stayed unbeaten over a mile, losing only once in his career, when he stepped up to 1m 2f in the Qipco Champion Stakes later that same season.

Goldikova, 2010. The brilliant French mare, the only horse to win three Breeders’ Cup Miles, brought a touch of continental glamour to Ascot. Ridden by Olivier Peslier and trained by Freddie Head, she set a new stakes record, beating the reigning champion Paco Boy by a neck in a sprint finish. A remarkable globe-trotter, she finished out of the first three in a Group 1 just once in twenty-four runs.

The Ascot Chronicles will continue with the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, Royal Ascot’s most prestigious middle-distance prize, and the race that asks a different question: not who is the best miler, but who is the best horse in training. Tuesday belongs to the milers. Wednesday belongs to the horses who believe they are something more.