THERE are many things that make Royal Ascot different, that set it apart from just about every other race meeting. There’s the royal thing for starters, and the cavalcade down the centre of the track (and no, the carriages were not four-wheel-drive this year), and the betting on the colour of the hat.

A meeting at which you can back your first winner (or loser) a half an hour before the first race.

(Orange, by the way, which contrasted brilliantly with her blue coat, according to the cognoscenti on Thursday. And it was just a coincidence that winning Gold Cup rider Ryan Moore was also clad in orange and blue, really.)

Here’s one though: their attitude towards commerce. Of course, Ascot is a business, just like every other business is a business, but it appears that profit maximisation is not the only objective. It may not even be one of the primary objectives.

Think of the extra revenue they could gain if they opened the (flood) gates to sponsorship for starters.

Oh there is the sporadic (top) hat-tilt to sponsorship, there is the Qipco thing and the Longines thing, and the Gold Cup In Honour Of The Queen’s 90th Birthday thing, but those agreements, whatever their nature, would appear to fit more neatly into the product placement category than into the sponsorship category.

You won’t find the King Edward VII Stakes being renamed the Freebets at Freebets.co.uk Stakes at Ascot, that’s for sure. Although Tercentenary really should sponsor more races, get their name out there more.

You see what Ascot did when they introduced a new race? The Commonwealth Cup? A race that plugged a gap in the three-year-old sprinting scene? They got rid of one.

The discontinuation of the Buckingham Palace Stakes, the seven-furlong handicap, was not universally popular, and you can easily make the case for the need for a seven-furlong handicap during the week. However, the point is that Ascot felt that they had to make room for the new race, create a space for it, not jettison it in on top of all that was already there. Not increase the number of races so that, in time, perhaps, if you really want to, you can increase the number of days.

Okay so they have increased the number of days relatively recently, from four to five, but that was on the back of Jubilee year, when the Saturday, Ascot Heath, became Royal Ascot too. So they just left it as it was then, five days instead of four, five days of Royal Ascot instead of four days of Royal Ascot and one day of Ascot Heath, after the five-day experiment in Jubilee year met with universal approval.

No, it’s five days, six races per day, and that’s good. It’s wall-to-wall quality, and it means that you leave the track every evening wanting just a little bit more, and thankful that you will be coming back in the morning for it. (More.)