Betting the Handicaps at Royal Ascot 2026 for Day 1 on June 16

The best betting opportunities at Royal Ascot are always the handicaps. Despite their ungraded status, they don’t lack good horses, and more to the point, the fields are nearly always full.

Better still, the UK handicappers normally do such a good job at compiling horse ratings, which ultimately determine the weights, that the fields are very evenly matched. The result is often much better returns than you’ll get playing the set-weight features.

Royal Ascot, Race 5, 12 noon ET: Ascot Stakes (Heritage Handicap), turf, 2 1/2 miles, 4-year-olds and up, $160,000

• $10 win/$30 show: #20 Kizlyar ($40)
• $1 trifecta: 16, 20 with 1, 16, 20 with 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, 16, 20 ($28)

Royal Ascot Analysis

British punters get sentimental at this meet whenever there’s a royal runner with a big chance, and in this race the King and Queen are represented by #4 Reaching High, prepared for them by Irish jumps training legend Willie Mullins. He hasn’t raced since last year's race, when he didn’t get the best of passages before finishing ninth as the favorite.

When you add the fact Ryan Moore will be riding, it’s no surprise Reaching High has been made a 2-1 morning line chance. He may win, but those are extremely unattractive odds, and if he stays at that level, he’s not a particularly appealing betting proposition.

Fresh from winning the Oaks (G1) with Thundering On, Aidan O’Brien’s son Joseph is attacking this race in numbers, potentially providing seven of the 20 starters. According to the market, his best chance is #16 Puturhandstogether at 8-1. Like many in this field, he’s spent part of his career over jumps, and he comes to this race after a jumping winter with a seventh in a Chester handicap on May 8 in which he stumbled at the start and didn’t get a clear run. No doubt the fact Oaks-winning rider Dylan Browne McMonagle is aboard is connected to his price.

#7 Galileo Dame (12-1) finished fourth in that same Chester race for O’Brien, 4 1/2 lengths ahead of Puturhandstogether; admittedly, he had a cleaner run, but he’s only one pound worse off at the weights and looks reasonable value.

My favorite among the O’Brien team, however, is #20 Kizlyar (15-1). He’s my favorite kind of horse in these handicaps; relatively young at four years, looking to be on his way up and possibly not yet handicapped to his best.

Kizlyar had three goes over hurdles over winter but didn’t do much, prompting O’Brien to put him back on the flat. He didn’t run well at Navan on March 30, finishing behind fellow Ascot Stakes starter #6 Mordor (15-1) on heavy ground, but improved sharply to win at Killarney on May 12 under McMonagle. The fact McMonagle is on Puturhandstogether instead is a mild concern, but Joey Sheridan is a capable rider, and he’s far enough down the weights at 129 pounds to be dangerous.

Of the others, #1 Beylerbeyi (12-1) and #2 Bunting (10-1) both have reasonable chances. They were first and third in the prestigious Cesarewitch Handicap on Oct. 11 handicap at Newmarket and have headed their separate ways since then; Bunting to hurdles (not very successfully), and Beylerbeyi to both graded stakes company (a distant sixth in the Ormonde at Chester May 7) and then, intriguingly, 10th in a much shorter 1 1/4 mile handicap at Epsom June 5. 

Back over a staying trip, Beylerbeyi in particular looks a decent shot with young rider of the moment Billy Loughnane aboard. #11 Bahadur (20-1) and #13 Westminster Moon (15-1) are others worth considering for exotics.

It’s an interesting race, but I’m going with Kizlyar to put up a nice performance at generous odds.