Royal Ascot 2025: Best Bets for Day 2

Day Two of the Royal Ascot is on Wednesday, and BettingLounge's horse racing expert Conlan has returned to go through some of the best bets of the day.

You can also check out our complete preview for the festival, which goes into each race and the favourites.

🥇 Best Bet

Day 2 of Royal Ascot kicks off with the Queen Mary Stakes, but for my Best Bet of the day, I’m looking ahead to the Group 2 Duke Of Cambridge Stakes, where Godolphin will be hoping that Cinderella’s Dream can add to their collection of Group accolades.

Mounted by William Buick, the filly bears a 3lb penalty after her impressive win in the Group 2 Dahlia Stakes over at Newmarket last month. In this race, she saw off Elmalka, whom she faces again, and had gathered Group 1 form prior to that race, which franks her ability.

She was held up at the back of the field up until the final two furlongs, where she sauntered into the lead and won without much effort required.

I expect this to be replicated today over the mile trip, which is a drop back since her Newmarket success, but she has seen victory two times from three over this trip, both coming with Buick aboard.

🥈 Next Best

The Prince Of Wales’s Stakes sees an incredibly strong lineup at 16:20, with Los Angeles heading the market as of writing for Aidan O’Brien, but it is Anmaat who has piqued my interest here.

These two are facing off for the third time running, where Los Angeles batted off the Shadwell gelding last time out at the Curragh over an extended 1m 2½f trip. Over this reduced trip, Anmaat has form figures of 12112, including a win at Ascot last October (Los Angeles 9th), and all three of these victories coming on Good ground or better.

Jim Crowley has faced plenty of criticism recently for his rides, but I expect him to slice through this field on this Champion Stakes winner as he did there.

Conlan's Day 1 Best Bet landed at 5/2, let's hope he can go two for two.

👀 Longshot

My second long shot of this meeting is the Jack Channon-trained Urban Lion, who turns out in the Class 2 Royal Hunt Cup at 17:00.

This is a big race, with 30 runners currently set to head out of the stalls at the time of writing. Mounted by Edward Greatrex, who has form figures of 121 when aboard over this trip in his last 3 runs, has seen a huge upturn in form since dropping to the mile route.

He won as recently as 3 days ago in a Class 2 at Sandown, where he led and won by two lengths, and the handicapper may not have quite caught up with him yet, and he could easily take advantage of that here, coming from stall 3.

He has already seen market support in the last 24 hours, and on the day, the 33/1 price may end up looking like an absolute robbery.