Royal Ascot 2022: Prince of Wales’s Stakes and more on day two – live!

Good morning from Royal Ascot, where temperatures are forecast to reach 25C this afternoon, the good-to-firm ground will be getting quicker by the minute and several thousand gentlemen (and rogues) who are really not dressed for the weather will already be perspiring freely as the Royal Procession makes its way down the track at 2pm.

But it should be worth the discomfort, because Wednesday’s card has something for everyone: a couple of juvenile sprints, a field full of St Leger types in the Queen’s Vase, one of the year’s most competitive handicaps and the Royal meeting’s first ever £1m race at 3.40.

That works out as £200,000 per runner in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, but what the feature event lacks in numbers, it makes up for in quality and variety. Bay Bridge, the favourite, is stepping up to Group One company for the first time, whereas his four rivals all have at least one victory at the highest level to their name.

Sir Michael Stoute’s colt was odds-against at 5-4 on Tuesday afternoon but there has been plenty of cash for him this morning and you will now struggle to beat 10-11. There were echoes of the great Mtoto about his win in the Brigadier Gerard Stakes at Sandown last time – which to my mind is pretty much the highest praise you could ever attach to a racehorse – and Bay Bridge will send his Derby-winning trainer, Sir Michael Stoute, past £2m in prize money in 2022 if he picks up the £600,000 first prize.

His biggest rival according to the betting is Japanese-trained Shahryar, who took the immensely valuable Sheema Classic on World Cup night in Dubai back in March and is looking to be the first runner from Japan to win a race at the Royal meeting. All five runners, though, will go to post with a realistic chance, and it promises to be a fine highlight despite the lack of numbers.

The action is underway at 2.30pm as a big field of juvenile fillies flies down the five-furlong course in the Group Two Queen Mary Stakes. News, results, race-by-race previews and even in-running commentaries will be here on the blog as the action unfolds, so let’s saddle up for the second afternoon at the Royal meeting.