Currently scheduled as the opening race on the opening day of Royal Ascot, as it has been since 2008, the Queen Anne Stakes is nowadays a Group 1 contest, worth £750,000 in prize money, run over a mile and open to horses aged four year and upwards. The race was inuaugurated, as the Trial Stakes, in 1840, but renamed to its current title in 1930, in memory of Queen Anne (r. 1702-1714), the monarch who established racing at Ascot in 1711.
Following the creation of the European Pattern in 1971, the Queen Anne Stakes was awarded Group 3 status, but was promoted to Group 2 status in 1984 and, again, to Group 1 status in 2003. Since then, the roll of honour reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of European miling talent, notably including Frankel who, in 2012, strolled to an extremely impressive, 11-length success at odds of 1/10. In so doing, the son of Galileo earned a Timeform Annual Rating of 147, which remains the highest ever awarded.
Godolphin trainer Saeed bin Suroor and former Goldolphin jockey Lanfranco ‘Frankie’ Dettori remain the most successful in the history of the Queen Anne Stakes with seven winners apiece. More recently, at the time of wrting, seven of the last 10 winners were four-year-olds and five of them were set off outright favourite. However, the Queen Anne Stakes has also thrown up winners at 33/1 (twice) and 14/1 (twice) in the past decade, so fancied runners do not, necessarily, have things all their own way.