An as yet unnamed punter from Watford had a very good time indeed at Ascot in June 2022, netting themselves a massive £307,464.02 for just a £5 stake.
They placed a £2.50 each way acca on seven selections on the second to last day of Royal Ascot, and probably ended up feeling pretty regal themselves by the end of it.
Tony Kenny, speaking on behalf of William Hill who took the bet at one of their shops, said:
“Many of our customers try going through the card at the bigger meetings like Royal Ascot or Cheltenham but few manage it. However, one pulled off the incredible feat of successful choosing all seven winners on the penultimate day of the royal meeting at a frankly ridiculous price of 122,889-1.”
The average salary in the UK is around £31.5k per year, and based on the winning figure the lucky bettor could take about 10 years off after their win.
A Tough Field to Call
Any acca win is to be celebrated, but this was a particularly tricky field to call since it was such a major event, attracting many runners in most of the races – 28 in the busiest.
The bigger the field the harder it is to bag a winner, and this was a busy race card.
The horses the punter backed along with the odds they took and a few other race details were as follows:
- Meditate – 4/1 – Albany Stakes – 16 runners
- Perfect Power – 4/1 JF – Commonwealth Cup – 20 runners
- Candleford – 13/2 – Duke of Edinburgh Stakes – 18 runners
- Inspiral – 10/3 F – Coronation Stakes – 12 runners
- Heredia – 9/2 F – Sandringham Stakes – 28 runners
- Changingoftheguard – 7/10 F – King edward VII Stakes – 6 runners
- Latin Lover – 9/1 – Holyroodhouse Stakes – 27 runners
As you can see, 4 of the 7 were actually favourites (1 a joint favourite), including Inspiral which was ridden by Frankie Dettori, who up until that point had been having a dreadful time.
He had ridden 15 races since the festival began without winning a single one, only managing to place 4 times and even coming last on a few occasions. What’s more, this was Inspiral’s first race in over 8 months, so our punter may well have been losing hope.
But when Frankie did finally manage to be first past the post he did it in style.
Inspiral was towards the middle of the pack for much of the race and struggling to find daylight, but managed to break free just in time to gather speed and not only get ahead of the pack, but advance well out in front of them.
It wasn’t the only exciting finish for our lucky punter though; their very last pick, Latin Lover, only just managed to get ahead in time for the finish line in what must have been an excruciating few seconds.