Royal Ascot 2025 - Asmarani

My apologies for the slight gap in content on this blog, but with Royal Ascot taking over the racing world for a fortnight, it seemed to be a good time to take a short break. Feeling refreshed, I'll start again with a short series looking back at some of the French runners at Royal Ascot last week. Everyone saw Lazzat win the Queen Elizabeth II Jubillee Stakes and I'm sure that everyone also has an opinion on Zarigana and how she threw away the Coronation stakes. However, there were plenty of other French runners at the Royal meeting in 2025 and although Lazzat was the only winner, there are reasons to be positive about several performances. Here's the first;

Queen’s Vase - Asmarani (10th)

Having been sent of the Joint-Favourite for this race at 4/1, a 10th placed finish will be seen as a disappointment, even if the winner (Carmers) goes on to be one of the leading 3-year-old stayers this season. It’s quite hard to see where that market confidence came from given that Asmarani had yet to encounter ground this quick and he had needed every yard to win over 12-furlongs at Saint-Cloud. Perhaps it was the subsequent form of Rafale Design, who had gone on to win a Group 3 at Chantilly after beating Asmarani at Paris Longchamp in May. Mickael Barzalona reported that he was struggling for pace from the start and the sectional times would confirm that, with Asmarani 1.09s slower than the winner over the opening furlong. A winning time of 2:59.93 made Carmers the fastest winner of this race in the last 20 years and with a finishing speed of 99%, there were no hiding places. If we compare that to his most recent starts in France, where the races were run with finishing speeds of 117% and 115%, it’s easy to see why he found the early gallop far too strong. He’s a son of Sottsass out of a Sea the Stars mare and clearly stays well, but he also has a turn-of-foot, which he showed when running the final 3-furlongs in 34.20s at Paris Longchamp and he looks much better suited to the French style of racing.

I don’t think that we are likely to see him in the UK again, certainly not on ground this quick, but to his credit we should add the note that he did keep trying and was faster than the winner in furlongs 10 and 13. At a peak average of 24.38 ft, his stride length was over a foot shorter than the principles and in a test of stamina like this that left him vulnerable. I can’t call him an unlucky loser, but we can say that he ran in a race that didn’t play to his strengths and there will be plenty of better opportunities for him in France later this season.