The Queen Mary Stakes was inaugurated in 1921 and is named after Mary of Teck, who was queen consort of the United Kingdom from the accession of her husband, King George V, to the throne on May 6, 1910 until his death on January 20, 1936. Currently scheduled as the opening race on the second day of Royal Ascot, staged annually in June, the Queen Mary Stakes is run over the minimum distance of 5 furlongs and restricted to two-year-old fillies, as it always has been. However, it is, nowadays, a Group 2 contest, having been promoted to that level in 2004.
In the last two decades or so, notable winners of the Queen Mary Stakes include Attraction, Damson, Rizeema and the Wesley Ward-trained pair Lady Aurelia and Campanelle, all of whom were subsequent Group 1 winners. Attraction, who went on to complete the 1,000 Guineas/Irish 1,000 Guineas double as a three-year-old, was arguably the pick of that quartet.
The record time for the Queen Mary Stakes is 58.18 seconds and belongs, with a major caveat, to the Zafonic filly Flashy Wings, trained by Mick Channon, who justified joint-favouritism with a convincing, 3-length victory over main market rival in 2005. The caveat, of course, is that, with Ascot Racecourse closed for a multi-million pound redevelopment, the 2005 running of the Queen Mary Stakes – and, indeed, the whole of the Royal meeting – took place at York.
The record time for the Queen Mary, at Ascot, is 59.17 seconds and belongs to Maqaasid, trained by John Gosden. The daughter of Green Desert – the sire of many precocious juveniles – arrived at Ascot having raced just once before, when winning a run-of-the-mill fillies’ maiden stakes race at Sandown the previous month, but took the step up in class in her stride, running on well to win by a neck.