Australian participation brings added spice to a meeting with everything

Not everyone will have left Royal Ascot happy but a general feelgood factor about the week was not entirely down to the return of unrestricted crowds.

Prizes seemed to be reasonably fairly shared out among the most powerful players and a few newer and smaller ones, there were daily heroes and villains to mull over and fluctuations between winning favourites and complete boil-overs.

There was also proper international competition once more, with representation in some form from just about every major global racing nation from America and South Africa to Hong Kong.