Run over a mile and a half, restricted to three-year-old colts and geldings and worth £250,000 in prize money, the King Edward VII Stakes is a Group 2 contest currently scheduled as the penultimate race on the fourth day of Royal Ascot. The race was inaugurated, as the Ascot Derby, in 1834 and originally open to both sexes, such that it was regularly contested by horses that had run in the middle-distance Classics, the Derby and the Oaks. It was renamed in memory of King Edward VII in 1926.
Testament to the long, illustrious history of the King Edward VII Stakes are the facts that the most successful trainer of the Victorian era, John Porter, remains the leading trainer with nine winners and his contemporary, Herbert Mornington ‘Morny’ Cannon, remains the leading jockey with seven winners. Among the current crop of trainers, Aidan O’Brien has fared best in the past decade, having saddled Japan (2019) and Changingoftheguard (2022). Ryan Moore, who rode both O’Brien-trained winners, is jointly the leading jockey in that period, alongside William Buick, who rode Permian (2017) and Old Persian (2018).
Eight of the last 10 renewals of the King Edward VII Stakes have featured single-figure fields, a fact reflected by five winning favourites in the past decade, three more winners from the first three in the betting and just one at odds longer than 7/1. Indeed, Pyledriver, who was sent off at 18/1 in 2020, went on to win the Coronation Cup at Epsom and the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, both Group 1 contests, in 2021 and 2022 respectively. As far as trial races for the King Edward VII Stakes are concerned, the Derby is as good as any, with King Of Steel (2023) the last horse beaten in the Epsom Classic to regain the winning thread as Ascot.