Taking its name from the market town seven miles west of Ascot Racecourse, the Wokingham Stakes is 0-110 ‘Heritage’ handicap, run over six furlongs, open to horses aged three years and upwards and worth £175,000 in prize money. It is currently scheduled as the fifth race on the fifth and final day of Royal Ascot, where it has become one of the major betting highlights of the week. The Wokingham Stakes was inaugurated, in its current guise, as a single division, in 1874, making the oldest handicap run at the Royal Meeting.
A handful of horses have won the Wokingham Stakes two years running, the most recent of which was Rohaan, trained by David Evans, who did so as a three- and four-year-old in 2021 Evans aside, no other trainer or jockey has won the race more than once in the past decade, which should come no surprise granted that the Wokingham Stakes is an out-and-out cavalry charge with a maximum safety limit of 30 runners. Historically, several jockeys, including the likes of Fred Archer, Lester Piggott, Willie Carson and, most recently, Johnny Murtagh, won the race three times, while Paul Cole, who retired in 2025, was the latest trainer to saddle three winners.
Just one favourite, Cape Byron (2019), has won the Wokingham Stakes in the past decade and just one other winner, Rohaan (2021), was returned at single-figure odds. The other winners in that period were sent off at 33/1, 28/1, 25/1, 22/1, 18/1 (twice), 12/1 and 10/1. Interestingly, two of the last 10 winners were drawn in stall one, hard against the far side rail, but the remainder were all drawn in stall 10 or higher. One of the two, Out Do (2017) was, jointly, the lowest-rated winner in the last 10 years and the only one to carry less than 9st 2lb.