Racegoers need plenty of stamina to keep a spring in their step to the very end of the five days of the Royal meeting, and that is also true of the last race on Saturday’s card. The Queen Alexandra Stakes is, in fact, the longest flat race run under Rules in Britain – although, at almost two-and-three-quarter miles, it is slightly shorter than its original three-mile distance back in 1864. And how appropriate that the longest race is being run on the eve of the longest day of the year.

If it’s a stayer you’re after, then there are few better breeders in England to source them from than Philippa Cooper, whose Normandie Stud provided Wathnan with its first Royal Ascot winner, Gregory. Hopes are high that another Normandie graduate, French Master, can bring the curtain down on our favourite meeting in successful fashion. The son of Frankel has already been there and done that, of course, having won last year’s Copper Horse Stakes for trainers John and Thady Gosden, beating subsequent dual G1 winner, Caballo de Mar, on that afternoon last June.