'No place on earth that can compare to the lusciousness of what you have here' - Royal Ascot gave British racing good reason to feel proud

Royal Ascot is staged in one of the monarch's back gardens and attended by multiple members of the royal family. The racecourse is covered in Union Flags, there are two renditions of the national anthem every day and Gyles Brandreth turns up in top hat and tails. It is hard to imagine any major sporting event could be any more British – and what we got this year was exceedingly good for British racing.

It would be overly harsh on the Cheltenham Festival to claim the 2024 royal meeting was an antidote to what took place in March. It would, however, be entirely fair to contrast the negativity that beset Cheltenham with the upbeat mood that enhanced Ascot.

Whereas Cheltenham was weakened by small fields, diluted competition, an excess of odds-on shots and a further drop in attendances, every day of Royal Ascot was filled with huge fields and competitive action watched on course from one afternoon to the next by more people than 12 months ago. Taken as a whole, what Ascot had that Cheltenham lacked was a palpable feelgood factor. Even a desperately poor Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes was saved by the race getting its first back-to-back winner in 65 years.