After a slightly nervy start, which included an eight-mile tailback on the A64 on Tuesday morning, Royal Ascot at York came on to a game as the week progressed and by the time the stragglers were wending their way home on Saturday night, the consensu
s of opinion was that holding the meeting oop north had been far from the mitigated disaster some southern pessimists had predicted. As long as you ignored the awful ground the horses had to run on, that is.
The five days attracted a total attendance of 224,468 which is an impressive figure Knavesmire supporters will doubtless use to argue their case for having another go next year should the Royal fixture be forced to flit again.
Ascot is set to reopen for business on 27 May, 2006 following its £185 million facelift but for all the confident noises being made about the work being completed on time, it would hardly be a novelty for builders not to be quite finished when they said they would be.
If that happens, Ascot officials will again have to make a decision on where to re-locate to and with this year's fixture reckoned to have pumped around £60 million into the local York economy, there's a rather juicy plum at stake here.
Newbury and Newmarket will once again enter the equation and with some powerful lobbying sure to be done on their behalf, the outcome would be no foregone conclusion even if it was only a three-horse race, although whatever is decided, there's little time to hang about. It took York two years to prepare for last week, so like Rome, Royal Ascot clearly wasn't built in a day.
If it was up to me, I'd really make the blue-bloods choke on their crust-free cucumber sandwiches by announcing that one of Scotland's trio of Flat courses were in the running to hold the 2006 fixture. That way, we'd at least be assured of getting decent going.
It's good to firm for Musselburgh's card this afternoon and that should suit old-timer Colway Ritz in the last. The 11-year-old hasn't won for a long time but he's been running pretty well lately and he can cash in on having been cut a bit of slack by the handicapper.
Mark Johnston, also responsible for the nap Emerald Bay at Nottingham, can win with Always Baileys, while Michael Dods has prospects of a double courtesy of Spanish Law and Bettys Pride with The Old Soldier fancied to make up for being beaten a short head in the seven furlong handicap 12 months ago.
Also heading to the East Lothian venue are fundraisers for the Brooke, the charity set up to help the millions of horses overseas whose job in life is to work, not race.
The full article contains 502 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
