Royal Ascot, where six Americans are competing this year.
Photo by La Bete
Cannonball, the first of six Wesley Ward-trained American runners to compete at the 2009 Royal Ascot meet, finished a praiseworthy sixth to Australian star Scenic Blast in the Group 1 King’s Stand Stakes Tuesday. The four-year-old gelding hovered at the back of the pack early in the five-furlong race, but hit a high gear the last quarter mile and passed several of the world’s best sprinters for a very strong finish.
The white-faced Scenic Blast won with such ease that he all but humiliated the field, while the filly Fleeting Spirit was by far the best of the rest in second. Anglezarke was third of the fifteen starters.
Cannonball was beaten 5 1/2 lengths by the winner—not a small margin in a five-furlong race, but it was a gallant, fast-closing effort, and one of the best American finishes in a European or Dubai turf stakes in the last several years. The gelding proved his mettle today, and will be even more highly regarded when he returns to American racing later this summer. Cannonball, a homebred for Ken and Sarah Ramsey by their stallion Catienus, was ridden by U.S.-based jockey John Velazquez.
Previously, the last American to compete at England’s Royal Ascot meet was Mighty Beau in the 2005 King’s Stand (in which he finished a game 5th) and Golden Jubilee (11th).
And so, Wesley Ward is off to an auspicious beginning at one of the world’s greatest race meets. His remaining starters are two-year-olds. Two were scheduled to compete later today: Honor in Peace in the Group 2 Coventry Stakes at six furlongs, and Strike the Tiger in the five-furlong listed Windsor Castle Stakes. However, Honor in Peace did not draw into the Coventry Stakes.
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