Royal Ascot, founded by Queen Anne in 1711, ran through June heat in 2025, and Trawlerman won the Gold Cup by seven lengths in a course record.
Royal Ascot gave the British summer its central week in 2025. Five days of racing ran at Ascot Racecourse in Berkshire from Tuesday 17 to Saturday 21 June.
Queen Anne founded Ascot in 1711, having ridden out from Windsor Castle six miles away and judged the common fit for racing, and the first meeting was run there on 11 August that year. Her plans were announced in the London Gazette that July. The first public grandstand went up in 1839 and has been rebuilt five times since. Three centuries made the June meeting the centre of the British social year rather than merely its best racing.
Royal Ascot is organised by enclosure rather than by day, and the enclosures are the fixture. The Windsor Enclosure sets no formal dress code, the Queen Anne Enclosure asks for morning dress or a day dress and a hat, and the Royal Enclosure belongs to its Members and their guests.
The 2025 meeting ran in heat that reached 30°C. On the Thursday Trawlerman won the Gold Cup, the two-and-a-half-mile race Ascot was built around, by seven lengths under William Buick. A year after finishing second in it, he led all the way for John and Thady Gosden and stopped the clock at four minutes 15.02 seconds, a course record. The time it beat, set by Rite Of Passage, had stood for 15 years.