Nature Strip confirms class with win for the ages at Royal Ascot
Royal Ascot starts with a bang today thanks to three Group One races, including one of the most eagerly anticipated clashes of the week as Nature Strip and Golden Pal meet in the King’s Stand Stakes.
Tuesday is nearly always the best of Ascot’s five days and this afternoon all the focus is on the sprint which pits the fastest from Australia and the United States at a neutral venue. Home-trained horses would appear to be there only to pick up the pieces should the two international guests go too fast and cut each other’s throats – a not-impossible scenario.
Wesley Ward has been taken seriously by punters and rival trainers ever since pitching up with cowboy boots under his tail trousers, and a Stetson for a top hat, in 2009 when his Strike The Tiger belied odds of 33-1 to take the Windsor Castle Stakes.
The former US champion apprentice has saddled a further 11 winners at the Royal meeting and most of his horses have the same running style; he trains them to exit the stalls as though they have been shot from a cannon and they are invariably three lengths clear after half a furlong.
But for as many who have won, plenty of others have got to the furlong pole, taken a deep breath and started treading water. Indeed, it is what has appeared to happen to Golden Pal on both previous visits to Britain, in the Norfolk Stakes here and the Nunthorpe at York.
His jockey, Irad Ortiz Jr, is the best in the US but this is his Ascot debut and he will have to adapt quickly. Out in front, it is going to be just him, the wind in his hair and the clock in his head, and while Ascot might look pretty flat, it has a stiff uphill finish.
Travelling a horse from Australia, in their winter, is no easy task either. Black Caviar was the last to succeed when extending her unbeaten record, just, in the Diamond Jubilee a decade ago.
Getting Nature Strip halfway around the world in tip-top form is trainer Chris Waller’s first job. His gelding is rated marginally better than Golden Pal, while also in his favour is jockey James McDonald, who has a lot more experience of riding in Britain than Ortiz, and he can sit just off Golden Pal, in cycling terms, slipstreaming the leader.
Neither is unbeatable, however. Nature Strip has lost at short odds on a few occasions and there is a feeling not only that it needs to fall right for him these days but that Covid caused him to miss the boat for this trip when he was at his imperious best two years ago. But the King’s Stand is no foregone conclusion; so often when a race is billed as a match, something else turns up to spoil the tea and scones for two.
In the race 12 months ago, they went so fast up front that three of the first five home were described as “slowly away, travelled in rear”, and the winner, Oxted, was a six-furlong specialist.
It looks like the race will be set up again for Arecibo, runner-up a year ago, making him an interesting 50-1 shot, while King’s Lynn, unlucky in 2021 and in front of Arecibo at Haydock last time, Twilight Calls and Godolphin’s freshened-up Man Of Promise could all benefit from a blistering gallop and the pace collapsing late on.
The aperitif to the King's Stand is the Queen Anne Stakes in which Baaeed, the world’s highest-ranked horse, runs against what appears weak opposition. It would be the shock of the summer were he to lose his unbeaten tag.
The 2,000 Guineas winner Coroebus should win the St James’s Palace Stakes but he will not be much of a price and the each-way value could be with New Energy, runner-up to Native Trail in the Irish 2,000 Guineas.
Royal Scotsman, trained by Paul and Oliver Cole, is the nap of the day in the Coventry Stakes for a stable that has won the race three times previously.
