17:00 Royal Ascot – Halifax to give Johnston latest Queen’s Vase win
Published:Mark Johnston has a fine record in the Queen’s Vase in the past decade and can continue his dominance of the Group Three contest at Royal Ascot this year with Halifax.
Johnston has saddled five Queen’s Vase winners since 2001 and arrives at Royal Ascot with three strong contenders this year.
Although Namibian may be the best of the trio in terms of ratings, Halifax has the potential to be a big improver.
Halifax has won on each of his last two starts and given the way he gustily ran on to triumph at Newcastle last month, he could relish the step up to 2m.
In this race over 1m4f, Halifax never looked stronger than when passing the winning post and looks well bred being by multiple Group One winner Halling, while also being related to former Ribblesdale Stakes winner Hibaayeb.
Halifax is ? in the Royal Ascot odds for the Queen’s Vase and all of the last 16 winners have come from the first six in the betting market.
Another interesting statistic is that seven winners in this time had never raced as two-year-olds, which could be important given the small percentage of runners that this applies to.
One horse this year who only began racing in 2011 is Solar Sky, who also has decent form in the book through her second on debut behind World Domination.
He has won since at Haydock and could also appreciate a step up to 2m given the length of time it took him to pick up speed to achieve this success.
Solar Sky is ? to win the Queen’s Vase, with Aidan O’Brien’s Regent Street set to go off favourite at ?.
In Regent Street’s favour is that eight of the last nine winners had fallen to defeat on their final start before arriving at Royal Ascot.
