Bookies fear bashing as punters eye hotpots

Bookmakers will be shouting for a couple of shock results on the first day of Royal Ascot to kick-start what promises to be the biggest betting week of the summer.

The star-studded card features two short-priced favourites in Toronado in the Queen Anne Stakes, the five-day feast’s curtain raiser, and Kingman in the St James’s Palace Stakes.

Should both win, then the layers could be in for a tough time with Treve, the mount of the ever-popular Frankie Dettori, considered a banker tomorrow in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes.