No result would garner a bigger cheer than a Royal winner at Royal Ascot and Instalment's run at Newbury on Friday gave Her Majesty more reason than usual to look forward to those special five days in June.
The Cape Cross colt was having his first outing in public and, despite early hesitancy, ran on well to take the first division on the six-furlong Sanderson Weatherall Maiden Stakes by a head.
Out of the Machiavellian mare New Assembly, Instalment is closely related to another of her two winners, Regent’s Park, who is by Green Desert. New Assembly is a daughter of the Queen’s Abbey Strand, who also produced G1 winner Right Approach from a subsequent mating to Machiavellian, and is from the family of the great Height Of Fashion.
Instalment hails from Richard Hannon’s Wiltshire stable which is noted for its superb two-year-old record and sent out Major Cadeaux (Cadeaux Genereux) to win this race two years ago. That colt went on to finish runner-up in the Coventry Stakes on his next start at the Royal meeting (and has subsequently won Group races at three and four). Unsurprisingly, it is the Coventry which is now firmly on Instalment’s agenda and the top hats will be flying if he can go one better than his stablemate in the opening race of the world’s most famous race meeting.
