IN some respects, it felt as though Royal Ascot 2025 was a meeting that showed the sport’s top heights can be scaled without spending a fortune.

Queen Anne Stakes stunner Docklands kicked off the meeting in some style and cost just £16,000 as a yearling. In the week of a lifetime for his trainer Harry Eustace, the capable young handler also cracked the Commonwealth Cup with a €35,000 yearling buy in the shape of Time For Sandals.

There was a 9,000gns winner of the Windsor Castle Stakes thanks to Eve Johnson Houghton’s excellently-bought Havana Hurricane. Kudos to Highflyer’s Anthony Bromley and the Johnson Houghton team for securing outstanding value for a race they previously won with a 10,000gns bargain yearling, Chipotle, in 2021.

Seamie Heffernan demonstrated how he can still deliver the goods on the big stage when guiding Get It to victory in the Wokingham, a 40,000gns horse-in-training sale buy for George Baker. What about the Irish story of the week, though?

Joe Murphy and Gary Carroll’s Coronation Stakes triumph with Cercene was a special result for all involved, breaking through at Group 1 level. She’s now worth many multiples of the €50,000 she changed hands for as a yearling.

What’s more, there was a real spread of winners through the meeting. From a total of 35 races, there were 21 different yards hitting the target and 29 individual sires got on the scoresheet. Irish-breds were to the fore, winning 22 of the contests from 299 runners (ahead of British-breds on nine winners - from 225 runners).

That all might make it sound like Royal Ascot is a pretty accessible place for connections to get seriously involved, but don’t be fooled into thinking those types of recruitment results are the norm. They are very much the exception. By and large, reaching the bar to get into that hallowed winner’s enclosure remains extremely difficult.

Breaking it down

How much did a Royal Ascot winner cost, on average, last week? Well, of the 35 winners at this year’s Royal Meeting, 20 joined their current connections at public auction. That means we are dealing with information for what owners paid for a little more than 57% of winners. The rest were either home-breds, sold privately or never were available to buy at auction.

The average cost, when the relevant amounts are converted to Euros, comes in at €242,208 for a 2025 Royal Ascot winner - even with all those bargain stories at the 2025 meeting. The median is a little lower at €167,500.

A key point here is that 14 of the 20 winners in the sample were sourced as foals or yearlings, and their average price at this point was €238,942 (median €167,500). Against that backdrop, it shows how impressive the job was, for example, to buy Windsor Castle winner Havana Hurricane for 9,000gns.

Given the growing strength of the breeze-up market, it was noted that no two-year-old winner at this year’s meeting came from that space. In fact, only two winners (both in handicaps) across the week joined their current connections from the breeze-ups: Royal Hunt Cup scorer My Cloud (€325,000) and Palace Of Holyroodhouse Stakes winner Adrestia (£420,000). Interestingly, the pair both raced for KHK Racing Ltd and were bought by Stroud Coleman Bloodstock.

As for the four remaining winners in the sample, they were bought at public horse-in-training sales: Wokingham winner Get It (40,000gns), smooth Queen Alexandra scorer Sober (€115,000), versatile Ascot Stakes winner Ascending (100,000gns) and impressive Duke Of Edinburgh Stakes star Ethical Diamond (320,000gns).

London Sale

On the face of it, given the average cost of a Grade 1 winner at the 2023 Cheltenham Festival at public auction was €183,363 (median of €136,380), those Royal Ascot averages might have been expected to be a lot higher.

Perhaps, though, the more accurate barometer of what it costs to buy proven, form horses for the Royal Meeting can be found in the results of the Goffs London Sale. From 28 catalogued lots on the night before racing got underway, 20 were sold for a total of £8.07 million. That’s a much meatier average of £403,500 and a median purchase price of £300,000. Now, not all lots were bought to run at the five-day bonanza, but it was a pretty challenging week for many of those who did.

Of the nine horses who were marked as sold and raced at Royal Ascot last week, none managed to win and it was actually one of the least expensive lots who finished closest of all. Snellen, snapped up for £200,000 by Blandford Bloodstock and Tim Porter, finished a fine second in the Kensington Palace Stakes. That was as good as it got for the 11th-hour Royal Meeting recruits.

The only other runner to finish in the frame was the £2 million sale-topper Ghostwriter, third to Rebel’s Romance in the Hardwicke Stakes. Fairy Oak did run a rock-solid race to finish fifth in the Albany for Michael O’Callaghan after her £225,000 transaction, but none of the rest finished better than eighth.

Tycoon was bought for £600,000 at the London Sale and still went off an 18/1 shot in the Golden Gates Handicap when beaten nine lengths in eighth, a race in which Fantazy Man (£250,000) and Brindavan (£250,000) were also down the field.

Tropical Storm, sent off at 50/1 for the Commonwealth Cup, changed hands for a whopping £500,000 before finishing 17th of 20 runners, £390,000 bought an 80/1 shot for the Coventry in the shape of Super Soldier (14th of 20 runners) and £380,000 was the purchase price for Roi De France, who went on to be 22nd of 27 runners in the Buckingham Palace.

Bone Marra vendored for £240,000 at the same sale before only beating one home in the Coventry at 50/1, while another of the lots bought back by connections, Monteille at £975,000, came eighth in the King Charles III Stakes.

Even at a Tattersalls Online pop-up sale the week before, Miss Yechance - an 80/1 shot for the Queen Mary - went for £250,000 prior to her 19th of 23 runners behind True Love.

Timing premium

Flagging these prices isn’t at all with the intention of highlighting disappointments – nearly all these horses can still go on to have fruitful careers competing for valuable prize money around the world. Their purchases can be about much more than just one week’s work.

Still, there is no escaping that a premium price is clearly being paid for Royal Ascot candidates - nearly regardless of their prospects of collecting at the world-famous fixture, when you considering some of those runners’ SPs.

It was a superb week for Wathnan Racing when emerging with five winners, and it must be said that the team involved bought their runners quite shrewdly to emerge with that tally of winners. All five of their Royal Meeting heroes were private, horse-in-training acquisitions.

One can guess that the total spent on their team of 38 runners at the fixture must be pretty eye-watering given what the market is commanding for horses with a chance of collecting at Royal Ascot.

For example, we don’t know what their Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes winner Lazzat cost, but he had gone unsold at £2.25 million during the 2024 Goffs London Sale - and that was before he had won the Group 1 Prix Maurice de Gheest on his next start. He hadn’t struck outside of Group 3 company before last year’s London Sale, and connections still had a strong, seven-figure value placed on him.

In the context of those mega-money deals being done for Royal Ascot runners, those who managed to reach the promised land of a winner last week without spending massive amounts deserve immense credit. It can be done, but it sure ain’t easy.