Irish 1,000 Guineas heroine Lake Victoria to miss Royal Ascot

June 9, 2025

Irish 1,000 Guineas heroine Lake Victoria will miss the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot after meeting a setback.

The team at Coolmore announced the three-year-old will have an easy few weeks before targeting a return in the late summer or early autumn.

Prior to the news, Lake Victoria was the ante-post odds-on favourite with horse racing betting sites for the Group 1 Coronation Stakes at Ascot on June 20.

That race is now seemingly handed on a silver platter to French 1,000 Guineas winner Zarigana – backed in from 7/2 to 11/8 on Monday morning.

After finishing sixth in the English 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket on May 4 – when trainer Aidan O’Brien said she was only about ready for a racecourse gallop – Lake Victoria came on leaps and bounds to win the Irish version at the Curragh three weeks later.

Alongside the Coronation, she held entries in the Pretty Polly Stakes (June 28), Irish Oaks (July 19) and Sussex Stakes (July 30).

Lake Victoria is entered in the Irish Champion Stakes (1m 2f) on September 13 however O’Brien has always sounded keen to keep her at a mile.

The Frankel filly went unbeaten as a two-year-old last year, winning Group 1s at each of six furlongs, seven furlongs and a mile.

That impressive campaign culminated in a breathtaking victory at Del Mar in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, defying severe traffic in-running to land the spoils readily.

Lake Victoria, out of the sprinter Quiet Reflection who won the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot in 2016, has proved to be one of the most versatile horses in training.

She displayed lightning speed to blow away a Cheveley Park Stakes field at Newmarket over six furlongs last September but her best work has come at two furlongs up.

She was crowned the European Champion two-year-old filly of 2024 with a rating of 119, making her O’Brien’s second-best two-year-old filly in history behind former European Horse of the Year Minding (120).

Lake Victoria is the only Champion filly to win three Group 1s at the age of two and joined Ballydoyle’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe heroine Found as the only fillies to be outright Champion two-year-olds in Ireland.