TVG will have live, on-site coverage of the five-day, 2011 Royal Ascot meet from England that begins Tuesday, June 14 and runs through Saturday, June 18. Each day’s card will air from 9 a.m.—1 p.m. EDT.
TVG coverage will be anchored by will be Simon Bray, who will join the network’s UK racing expert, Graham Cunningham, to offer expert analysis and commentary from their Ascot paddock broadcast perch. TVG’s presentation of Royal Ascot is sponsored by Fasig-Tipton.
Highlighting the racing action are seven group I events, kicking off Tuesday with the Queen Anne Stakes, St. James’s Palace Stakes, and King’s Stand Stakes. On Wednesday, it’s the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, on Thursday the Ascot Gold Cup, on Friday the Coronation Stakes, and on closing day, Saturday, the Golden Jubilee Stakes.
Racing fans won’t have to wait long for the most anticipated showdowns of the meet when three-time TVG Breeders’ Cup Mile (gr. IT) champion Goldikova faces Canford Cliffs in Tuesday’s one-mile Queen Anne. Goldikova is seeking a repeat victory in the race. Later on Tuesday, the sensational and undefeated 3-year-old Frankel, coming off a win in last month’s 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, goes in the one-mile St. James’s Palace.
The next day, the Aidan O’Brien-trained So You Think, a two-time winner of Australia’s Cox Plate, tackles the 1 1/4-mile Prince of Wales’s. O’Brien, who has conditioned many champions, called So You Think the best horse he has ever trained.
On Friday, all American eyes will be on the Todd Pletcher-trained and Bobby Flay-owned More Than Real, as the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (gr. IIT) champ is expected to make her 3-year-old debut in the one-mile Coronation.
Wesley Ward, who in 2009 became the first U.S.-based conditioner to saddle a Royal Ascot stakes winner, will be back for with several horses.
“Our goal is to capture all that makes Royal Ascot the tremendous spectacle that it is,” said Tony Allevato, TVG senior vice president and executive producer. “First and foremost, we aim to deliver all sides of the racing story so that our viewers and account holders feel like they are truly part of the action. But secondarily, we want to present the glamour and the pageantry that are part and parcel with the Royal Ascot experience.
Coverage of the five days of Royal Ascot is an extension of TVG’s Summer Racing Series, which airs Saturday mornings at 9 a.m. EDT.