Ask anyone how their Royal Ascot 2025 was and you’ll pretty much get the same answer, writes David Massey. Hot. It was hot. Hot and sticky. Humid and sticky. Hot, and humid, and sticky. Perm any two from three, basically. We’ll come to that in a while but there’s no sign of that heat in my lovely air-conditioned car as I drive down to Windsor on Monday.
I go at 11am, to try and arrive around half three and meet up with Jason at our digs for the week. We’re staying near Bracknell, at Harman’s Water, which sounds like something you might treat with antibiotics. Having lost two Ascot Airbnb’s in the past couple of months (“twirled”, in bookmaking parlance - you book it early, then nearer the time you’re informed there’s a problem with your house, often something spurious and you know EXACTLY what’s actually happened, you’ve been gazumped by someone offering more money) we’re grateful to have somewhere to stay.
I arrive five minutes before Jason does and get the keys from the lockbox outside. Having opened the door and put the keys on the kitchen side, I start getting my gear in. There’s a room with two single beds which I’ll happily have, then Jason arrives. He starts getting his stuff in too, but as he goes to get his second lot of stuff, closes the door behind him.
It locks automatically.
I look at Jason and Jason looks at me, not realising what he’s done. Panic sets in as I try the door; it won’t open. I can see the keys on the kitchen side through the window but it’s no use, we’re stuffed. It’s taken us precisely four minutes to make our first error of the week.
Jason rings the property owner. He lives in Essex, it turns out, so can’t exactly drop the spare keys off, but he has someone local that does have a spare set. Unfortunately for us, he’s uncontactable until after 6pm, so there’s nothing we can do at this point except head down to Windsor, and get the keys later.
Windsor is full of bookmakers on a jolly night out, and I’m doing the Trackside service for a select few that have taken it for the evening. It’s nice to catch up with a few familiar faces I haven’t seen for a while, including a couple from abroad who come here for the week. This is the first time I’ve not worked for a bookmaker on Ascot week, choosing instead to help Vicki run Trackside. She’s more than capable of doing it on her own, in truth, but the bigger handicaps could use a helping hand, plus she’s other bits and pieces to write up and when that happens I can take over for a while. Come the winter and I’ll be more in the driving seat but Vicki steers on the level.
Having got the keys back (and this time split them up, one now safely attached to my keyring) we get into the digs properly and have a look round. It’s a pretty sparse Airbnb, there’s not much here. Neither has the back grass been cut for a few months. It’s the bare minimum of crockery in the cupboards, there’s hardly a mirror in the place, the TV doesn’t appear to have had any channels loaded onto it. There’s not even a toaster. The lamps in the bedrooms are the flimsiest of things that would go over in a good gust of wind; essentially, this is a student house with four bedrooms.
Thankfully I’ve brought my own fan down which I purchased only that morning from Argos and that at least enables me to get a decent night’s sleep. (It’ll turn out to be the best thirty quid I spend all week.)
The heat is already rising as I drive into Ascot on Tuesday. I try to arrive for around half eight - as many of you know, my first piece of work needs to be in by around half nine for the Life each day, and before that there’s the morning chat with Mr Delargy. It ought to take ten minutes but we’ll inevitably get sidetracked by something else and lose the thread at some point. I’m working in the middle of the track, in the media marquee near the winning post. It at least has a couple of air conditioning units, but is, in the words of one of the bookies reps, “like working in a massive cannabis farm.” I know what he means, not from personal experience you understand. I’ve also access, this year, to the media centre, which is by the paddock. I decide to give that a go Tuesday afternoon, but after a few hours in there, packed in like sardines in thirty degree heat, I decide the cannabis farm, rather than a sauna for battery chickens, is the better option for the rest of the week.
Those that read the Trackside columns will know I’ve been banging on about Docklands winning the Queen Anne since the Diomed, and he gets a right roar from me as he prevails by the narrowest of margins. It might only be race 1, day 1, but that almost ensures a decent Royal Ascot for your scribe, having backed it ante-post as well. I celebrate with a bottle of sparkling water. (Even by this point, those poor lads and lasses that are constantly restocking the fridges with water for us have given up trying to make it look neat by taking it out the plastic outer casing, preferring instead to throw packs of 24 in there and let us fight like caged tigers for them. It isn’t pretty, but it’s effective.)
Each day, before the Royal Parade arrives, you have to decide where you want to be, because at around 1.50 everything gets locked down, all gates are closed, and you have to stay where you are for about 30 minutes. Needless to say, I disappear off to the pre-parade ring nice and early each day, for two reasons; one, it’s obviously the best place for a first glance of the horses as they come in, and two, and arguably more importantly this week, there’s a lot of shade to hide away in up there. On the Thursday I’ve gone particularly early, around 1.20, well over an hour before the first, and unsurprisingly there’s nobody around. I’ve the pre-parade ring to myself until, from nowhere, a sunglasses-wearing figure appears, on his own. It’s Aidan O’Brien.
Aidan, as meticulous as he is, comes up each day to check the box he uses is spot on, that there’s water there for the staff, that everything is in its place. And here’s my chance to say hello to greatness himself. He finishes off his little jobs and walks toward where I’m standing. I wish him well for the day, and that he has luck on his side (like he needs it…). He puts his hand on my shoulder, thanks me for my kindness, and shakes my hand. I’m never washing this hand again. Charles Darwin then goes and wins the Norfolk, and clearly my wishing him luck played a huge part in that. Clearly.
That stay-where-you-are Royal Parade policy creates havoc for a couple of days. Some trainers and owners are caught behind a gate next to the pre-parade ring and aren’t being released as the horses go through to the parade ring. There’s a lot of angry trainers that want to be with their horses but the gate staff stand firm. Once released, it creates a huge bottleneck of connections trying to get into the parade ring (you have to use the walkway, not the horsewalk) and many trainers and owners simply give up, and use the horsewalk instead. The sight of just one attendant, arms spread wide open, trying to turn back a mob, Canute-like, has to be one of the most comedic images of the week. By Thursday this policy has been relaxed, and rightly so.
More on our digs. Rob, the bookmaker I’m staying with this week, comes back on Tuesday night. Let me add, at this point, Rob, and his partner Vanessa, who will be joining us later in the week, were in Vegas the previous week, staying at the Venetian. Now, it’s fair to say our digs are more menace than Venice, but Rob’s main concern is that he can’t find the remote for the telly. I tell him it’s a waste of time, as there’s no terrestrial channels on it, but he hunts down the remote, and finds a film on Netflix to watch instead. He’s asleep within ten minutes of putting it on. Rob can just about stomach the house - “it’s a bit basic, isn’t it?” - but I can’t wait to see what Vanessa makes of it. She’s going to hit the roof when she gets here on Thursday. I’m off to bed at ten, but the fan doesn’t work. It worked perfectly well last night, so what’s the issue? I have a look at the plug and only have to touch it to hear the whole socket fizzing and buzzing. Yep, the socket’s knackered. Add that to the ever-growing list of grumbles with this place.
I’ve already had a catch-up with my Australian bookmaker friend Erin, who comes over for Ascot each year to stand with the Rob Waterhouse crew, but that doesn’t stop me finding her again on Thursday. We have a good chat about the differences between British and Aussie bookmakers, which I always find interesting, before she asks me if I know anyone that might have some change going spare? They’ve already eaten into their stash. I hunt around and come up with a couple of hundred quids' worth, with the promise of some more tomorrow and Saturday if they need it. Erin, very grateful, promises me dinner next year as a thank you. Dinner with a gorgeous young lady, you say? It’s already in the diary, set in stone.
Back to some of the racing. Merchant is another nice winner for me on the week (and how good does that form look after runner-up Serious Contender pushed Lambourn all the way in the Irish Derby at the weekend) and Trawlerman, well, plenty of you probably saw the video I did with a certain Simon Nott that morning. I thought he was the bet of the week, and so it proved. Ascot is normally a tough week for me, but I’m nicely in front, and so it seems are most of the punters on the Thursday, with the bookmakers having to be carried out on stretchers after five winning favourites on the day. “Black armbands, gentleman”, as one bookie is heard to remark as he leaves the track.
Thursday night, and with Liam and Heather, who will be working for Rob the next two days, joining myself and Rob in the digs, they all decide to go down the pub to eat, whereas I’ve work to do, and have bought myself a microwave meal for one from Morrisons. (One of the many, many joys of working on the road.) I’m beavering away when the phone goes. It’s Rob, in the pub.
“Vanessa’s just arrived, but she says she can’t find the house. Can you ring her and direct her in?”. I’ve just realised - the crafty sods have all disappeared down the pub to leave me with Vanessa’s ire. I ring Vanessa and she’s just in the wrong part of the street. She parks up, gets out the car, looks at the unkempt garden and before I even get a hello, she looks at me and says one word. “Pi**hole.”
I just burst out laughing, as there’s no other reaction at this point. She rings Rob. “You’d better bring some wine back. And good wine, nothing cheap.” Vanessa is, let’s go with underwhelmed, with the place. I love Vanessa to bits, she’s actually from my neck of the woods and so we (literally) have some common ground between us, but I don’t think she’s in a particularly talkative mood at present! I leave her to explore the rest of the house, which takes her all of ten minutes.
Friday, and the heat reaches unbearable. I’d brought two suits along, thinking I’d change into the lighter linen one today, but that idea was abandoned after a day. However, I’m in the pre-parade ring when a fashion faux-pas is pointed out by photographer Debbie. I’ve had this suit three years now and never noticed the flaps are stitched together at the back. “They need releasing”, she says, “you’ll notice the benefits then.” She’s right, and after a bit of cutting using my keys, the airflow around my back is so much better. Three years, and I’ve never noticed. I’m a bit thick like that, sometimes. I can go into minute detail over a 0-100 handicap at Worcester but not spot two flaps stitched together that ought not to be for three years. My brain, like most men's brains, are wired up differently/wrongly (take your pick).
To top the week off, I’ve been playing low six/high six in the big straight-track handicaps all week, just for buttons, to see how I’d come out at the end of the week. By that I mean the lowest six drawn and the highest six drawn, just in case there’s a track bias. High draws seemed in charge for a day or two but that appears to have swung back a little, and when I hit 5p’s worth of the 11k trifecta in the Sandringham, it’ll ensure the best Ascot I’ve had for many a year. It’s almost worth putting up with the unbearable weather.
Friday night is fish’n’chip night at the digs, only when the food arrives we realise this place is not just short of crockery, but cutlery as well. There’s four of us (Liam has disappeared off to the pub to watch the rugby) and this place has - wait for it - only two forks. Thankfully Rob has some plastic cutlery in the van which saves the day, but the lack of utensils tips Vanessa over the edge again, and the not-cheap wine makes a reappearance. After food, Rob puts a film on and falls asleep (after the obligatory ten minutes) and myself, Vanessa and Heather get a pack of cards out. We teach Heather how to play rummy, and she learns quick, winning six of ten hands we play that night. This is actually the most relaxed we’ve been in this place since we got here. Maybe the wine (and my beer) has something to do with it. Or maybe it’s because we’re going home tomorrow.
Saturday, finally. Time to bid adieu, but not before the stifling weather has one more say. We pack up and leave the digs, vowing never to come anywhere near the place again (I think Vanessa has just about stopped short of torching it) and it’s by far my worst punting day of the week, giving a bit of the winnings back. I don’t have enough on the one success I do have, concentrating on the Wokingham instead, and get nowhere near the winner, or indeed places, and the exotics are a waste of time. Don’t worry, we can get it (or should that be Get It?) back on the Stewards Cup when Holkham Bay wins.
And that’s what’s next, Glorious Goodwood. Last year, we sweltered in the heat there, too. The highlight of that week was a dip in the sea at Bognor Regis. God, that felt good. It’s bound to rain this year, isn’t it?
See you all there.
- DM