Run over the Straight Mile at Ascot and open to horses aged three years and upwards, the Royal Hunt Cup is a ‘Heritage’ handicap, currently worth £175,000 in total prize and scheduled as the fourth race on the second day of Royal Ascot. The race was inaugurated, over a slightly shorter distance, in 1843, during the early reign on Queen Victoria.
Indeed, testament to the long, illustrious history of the Royal Hunt Cup is the fact that James Jewitt remains the leading trainer over a century-and-a-quarter after he saddled the last of his five winners, Knight Of The Thistle, in 1897. Likewise, Charles Wood and Lester Piggott remain the leading jockeys with four wins apiece. The Royal Hunt Cup is, in fact, one of just three perpetual trophies presented at Royal Ascot, the others being the Queen’s Vase and the Gold Cup.
The Royal Hunt Cup has a maximum safety limit of 30 and with that number of horses, or very close to it, going to post in all bar one of the last 10 renewals, creates a visual spectacle and a highly competitive betting market. In that period, two joint or outright favourites have won – coincidentally, the last two, Wild Tiger in 2024 and My Cloud in 2025 – but they were accompanied by winners at 25/1, 22/1, 18/1 and 16/1.
It is also worth noting that eight of the last 10 winners were four-year-olds, the other two were five-year-olds and, with the exception of Real World in 2021, all of them carried at least 9st 0lb. In terms of draw-bias, Portage won the Royal Hunt Cup from stall four in 2016, as did Real World in 2021, and Jimi Hendrix won from stall seven, but the other seven winners in the last decade were all drawn in stall 11 or above.