King’s Stand Stakes Betting Tips, Winners & History

Next Race: TBD

The next renewal of this race has not been scheduled yet. We will update this once the schedule has been released for next season. The race info, trends and tips shown below will be updated for the next renewal once the final declarations have been made.

King’s Stand Stakes Betting Tips

Note: The following tips are from 2020. Tips for the next renewal will be added once the final declarations have been made.

The King’s Stand Stakes is the fastest run race of the week at Royal Ascot. Every year, a collection of top class sprinters push their rivals all the way to the finish over five furlongs. As touched on above, this is a race which usually includes several international horses. That adds a certain amount of unpredictability to the betting markets with winners at 22/1, 20/1 and 12/1 in the last 12 years.

The trend for higher priced winners has been dented in more recent years. Each of the last four winners were inside the top three of the betting even if Blue Point, winner of each of the last two renewals, wasn’t the favourite in either race.

The list of official ratings of the most recent King’s Stand Stakes winners serves as a very good shorthand for the calibre of the race. None of the last 10 runners had a rating under 110 with Lady Aurelia topping the ratings at 121 in 2017.

Battaash (4/6)

One of the most notable attributes of the King’s Stand Stakes is the number of horses who return to compete in the race from the previous year. That always adds some very interesting storylines ahead of the race with last year’s build up dominated by the impending battle between Blue Point and Battaash.

The former got the better of the latter in 2018 (when Lady Aurelia was the favourite) and then did so again last year even though Battaash was a well-supported favourite with punters. Having missed out on both occasions there is a feeling among many racing fans that Battaash is owed a win in the King’s Stand Stakes but we all know that you can take nothing for granted in horse racing, especially at this level.

Despite his two defeats and the fact that he has never won at Ascot, Battaash’s position at the head of the betting for this year’s renewal is understandable. Whether he represents value at a general price of 4/6 is another matter entirely. It would be a great story for all connected to Battaash were he to finally break his Ascot hoodoo but at the odds it just makes sense for punters to look for better value in the markets.

Glass Slippers (4/1)

Glass Slippers is second only to Battaash in the betting and she has every chance of getting the favourite beaten at a very nice price. Few would have believed that she would feature so prominently in the betting for the King’s Stand Stakes when she missed Royal Ascot last year and instead ran in the Listed Land O’Burns Fillies’ Stakes at Ayr. That impressive run was the start of things taking a real turn for the better though and Glass Slippers deserves the attention she’s getting for this contest.

She didn’t win that day at Ayr but didn’t get the best of the ground unlike the winner and would surely have nicked it given another couple of strides. Although she was unable to build on that run with a win next time out over six furlongs she did exactly that over that trip in the Listed Prix Club Hipico Santiago. She then had absolutely no problems with a return to five furlongs to win at Group 3 level in the Prix du Petit Couvert on good ground at Longchamp and showed yet more versatility with a Group 1 win in the Prix de ‘Abbaye de Longchamp Longines on very soft ground.

What was perhaps most impressive about that first Group 1 success was the way that Glass Slippers was able to overcome a sluggish start to get right into contention and eventually take the race away from her opponents inside the final furlong.

Kevin Ryan was obviously delighted with Glass Slippers’ performances last season and has suggested that she’s even quicker as a four year old. He also claimed that she doesn’t need a competitive warm up run to be right back up there at her best so she is a very interesting option at 4/1.

Sergei Prokofiev (33/1)

Ballydoyle have had some incredible horses over the years but they’ve also had their fair share of frustrating horses who have all the required class but just cannot string it together consistently enough. Sergei Prokofiev is one such horse.

The expensively acquired, Canadian-bred horse had threatened to be a real star during his juvenile campaign but his form tailed off and it quickly became clear that his Classic hopes had gone. Just when racing fans were starting to write him off, this son of Scat Daddy rediscovered something as a sprinter.

His most recent performances (which include never featuring in last year’s renewal of the King’s Stand Stakes) have been poor, meaning that he is as big as 33/1 for his Royal Ascot appearance. That price reflects how difficult he can be but there is still something there and he will like the ground if the rain really falls so may be worth supporting each way for small stakes.