Pageantry, passion, perfection: another fabulous week on racing's grandest stage

Tuesday

It may be stretching a point to say that Royal Ascot offers an oasis of continuity in a bleak landscape of turmoil, but at the moment it's the best we can do. Of course, some people are more worried about food on the table and fuel in the tank than the trauma of stopping their top hat from falling down over their eyes, but in times of trouble you have to take what you can get.

Yes, it's a frippery, and it can't be justified in any real-world terms amid the rubble of razed cities and ruined lives; but the very least we can do in the pursuit of democracy is to damned well enjoy our hard-earned pleasures, so let's indulge and enjoy a first day that delivered what a British race meeting in the height of summer really should.

We're in the sunny strawberry season, a smidge before Wimbledon, running in tandem with a peachy Test match; the sun's shining and the turf is sensible good to firm; God is almost certainly in his heaven, or wherever it is he directs operations from these days. All of which means Ascot can do what it should do: deliver sane results in Group 1 races.