Top Hats and Tales : A Day of Racing at Royal Ascot Is a Spectacle in Several Ways

Upon arrival at Heathrow Airport outside London, we ran into Arthur Hancock and his wife, Staci. Hancock was one of the owners of Gato Del Sol, the Kentucky Derby winner in 1982, and a partner in Sunday Silence, the Derby winner in 1989.

We all had much too much luggage--Pat and I had been on the road for four weeks--and Staci was especially burdened with several large hat boxes.

“As you can see,” she said, “we’ll be at Royal Ascot for all four days.”

There is no greater sin for a woman than wearing the same hat twice at Royal Ascot.

The Hancocks had been to the mid-June meeting before, but this was going to be our first trip to the suburban London track, where the once-a-year Tuesday-to-Friday race meeting is billed as the British counterpart to a Breeders’ Cup day in the United States.

“Thank heaven for Royal Ascot’s unique cocktail of fast horses, pretty girls and pageantry,” wrote John Oaksey in the Telegraph. “(For four days) British racing can and will put on a spectacle the like of which can be found nowhere in the world. More than any other race meeting, except the Grand National (the steeplechase near Liverpool) and to a lesser extent the (English) Derby, Ascot reaches well outside sport’s normal audience. For all kinds of social and sartorial reasons that have nothing whatever to do with horses, or even betting, many people simply long to be there.”

Indeed, Ascot is a dizzying mix of hats, horses and hobnobbing. Even the men wear hats--gray top hats that are the codas to their three-piece morning suits. Several weeks before, I had faxed my measurements to Moss Bros, the 97-year-old London firm that rents about 10,000 outfits every year for Royal Ascot, and my ensemble was waiting for me at its shop near Piccadilly Circus.

A few years ago, a lot of us had laughed at the thought of Bobby Frankel, the Brooklyn-born trainer from California, appearing in such a get-up at Ascot, but he couldn’t have looked any more foolish than I did. The fit was perfect, but I guess some men never look good in hats.

Pat and I were to meet her sister and her sister’s husband--Margaret and Dave O’Donovan--at an underground station not far from Ascot, so we took the railway from our hotel in Kensington. I seemed to be the only man on the train in a morning suit. Remember the opening scene in the movie “Quick Change?” in which Bill Murray, on his way by commuter train to rob a bank in New York, is dressed like a clown? Well, that’s how I felt on the London underground, en route to Ascot.

In Ascot’s vast parking lot, which is actually a golf course, Dave O’Donovan got out of his car, looked around and said, “Every Rolls in Britain must be here.” We were not traveling in one of them.

We had been advised that cameras were not permitted inside the track. A London newspaper, doing a scouting report on Royal Ascot, had listed the “snob factor” as a nine on a scale of 10. In the parking lot, Dave tipped an attendant to take a picture of the four of us. I didn’t know that Dave had already tipped the impromptu photographer and also gave him something. All of this largess would have been quite worthwhile, had there been film in the camera. Dave didn’t talk to Margaret for about five minutes because of that.

We arrived at our gate, and Dave had to leave his camera in a locker.

Queen Elizabeth II had already arrived with the Queen Mother, the Prince of Wales and other members of the royal family. They reached the Royal Enclosure by horse-driven landau. We would be seeing them later, we told ourselves, because we had two credentials for the Royal Enclosure. Sports Illustrated had considered covering Ascot, but the assignment was canceled when the Queen wouldn’t consent to a 30-minute interview.

Tom Gamel, the horse owner and former board member at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, had told me that he was going to Ascot, but it seemed pointless to look for him. In these morning suits, all of the men looked alike. How do penguins manage?

There are six races daily at Ascot, which besides the Royal Ascot meeting runs only 19 other days the entire year.

Queen Anne, with an interest in racing, had the original course built in 1711, six miles from Windsor Castle. As it is now configured, Royal Ascot is a triangular course of about 1 3/4 miles on rolling land, which puts a premium on stamina. There is a rise of about three-eighths of a mile that takes the horses to the stretch turn, and it’s still uphill through the stretch, for all but the last furlong of the 4 1/2-furlong run.

In England, the races are listed by post times, not numerically. The first race is the 2:30, the second the 3:05, etc.

Barathea, the colt who forgot to turn left at the start of the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Santa Anita last fall, made his first start since then and won the 2:30, the Queen Anne Stakes. The 3:05, the Prince of Wales Stakes, was won by Muhtarram, who was saddled by John Gosden, the trainer who was based in Southern California for 10 years before he returned to England in 1989. At Royal Ascot, the trainers also dress in top hats and tails.

“Not the best thing to wear when you’re saddling horses,” trainer Clive Brittain said.

Thanks to everyone except me, our foursome cashed its first tickets in the 3:45, the St. James Palace Stakes, which at $350,000 was the richest race of the day. Grand Lodge beat Distant View by a head, under an all-out ride by Mick Kinane, the 35-year-old Irish jockey who is the strongest and perhaps the best rider in Europe.

Kinane’s whipping was so spirited that the stewards, although letting Grand Lodge’s victory stand, gave the jockey a two-day suspension, saying that he had used unreasonable force and raised the whip above shoulder height.

England’s whip rule has been controversial since it was adopted a few years ago, and Kinane’s suspension revived the furor.

“I had to give Grand Lodge everything I did to get him up to win, and I paid the penalty,” Kinane said. “It was the difference between winning and losing, and this is a classic example of where the rules conflict with winning.”

Henry Cecil, who trains Distant View, wants the whip rule changed.

“I’m not saying the better horse did not win, or taking away from Grand Lodge,” Cecil said. “But it does make a mockery of the rules when our jockey (Pat Eddery) stuck to them and the other rider didn’t.”

As Dave made his way from our seats down to the apron in front of the track to cash on Grand Lodge, he was glad that Mick Kinane had ignored the rules.

We bet most of the day with Duggie Pye, a fine old English concern that is one of more than a dozen legalized bookmakers operating side by side at track level. You can bet through the tote, as they do at U.S. tracks, but the advantage in using bookmakers is that you can shop for the best price, and you get the odds on a horse at the time you make the bet. The bookies post their numbers on elevated chalkboards, taking the bets while an assistant with a spreadsheet does the manual computations.

Before the 4:55, Margaret and I made our way over to the Royal Enclosure. Dave had dressed in a business suit, and only men in morning suits and women wearing hats covering the crowns of their heads are permitted in the enclosure.

Men in black derbies guard the gates, and their no-nonsense reputation is known throughout Europe. The sister of the Princess of Wales was once denied admission because she forgot her badge. And a few years ago, actress Joan Collins tried to enter with someone else’s badge. She was caught and has been denied credentials ever since.

But we found a softy at the gate. Our credentials weren’t what I thought they were, and he politely told us that we weren’t allowed.

“Look,” I said. “I’m from America. Do you think I’d be dressed like this if I didn’t want to get in?”

“Oh, all right, mate,” he said. “Pop on in, but please don’t say anything.”

The Royal Enclosure looks like a casting call for “My Fair Lady.” There are hats at Royal Ascot and then there are the hats in the enclosure. One woman was wearing a gray top hat like mine, only it was festooned with ostrich feathers. Another was wearing a wicker concoction that was a cross between a flying saucer and a giant banana.

A few years ago, a woman wore a red, white and blue model that jutted out like a battleship on either side. People behind her couldn’t see the races, so Sir Nicholas Beaumont, the clerk of the course, asked her to leave. She went to her car, changed to a smaller hat and came back in.

There are those social commentators who fear that too many badges are issued to the Royal Enclosure, that tackiness is around the corner for Royal Ascot.

“Ascot’s been ruined,” said Jeffrey Bernard, who writes a weekly column for the Spectator. “Many people go there to be seen, and not because it’s the best racing in Europe. The hats get in the way of the bloody horses.

“I can’t stand the people that go there. People who read Harper’s & Queen, Tatler and Vogue. They don’t know one end of a horse from another. They don’t appreciate what they’re seeing. Ascot’s almost Python-esque now.”

All I know is that we will go again. After the races, thousands in the crowd of 44,000 lingered as Lady Beaumont, the flag-waving wife of the clerk of the course, led a rousing community sing with the Grenadier Guards’ band in a gazebo behind the six-story grandstand.

We sang “Hello, Dolly,” “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” “Bring Back My Bonnie to Me,” “The Beer Barrel Polka,” and many more.

The lager and champagne never stopped flowing, but no one was tipsy enough to try turning over the bandstand, as had been attempted several years before.

And afterward, the police announced that they had randomly checked 66 drivers leaving Royal Ascot, and none had failed the intoxication test. That was the most extraordinary statistic on a truly extraordinary day.