Rachel Candelora's top tips for Wednesday: It's time to cheer for Chelsea

It is great to see 13 US raiders at the Royal Meeting this year, representing four different trainers, and I hope that the new link up with Royal Ascot and the Breeders’ Cup with four “Win and You’re In” races means that we’ll be seeing Royal Ascot winners at Churchill Downs in November.

For the first time this year the Queen Anne Stakes (Breeders’ Cup Mile), Princes of Wales’s Stakes (BC Turf), Coventry (Juvenile Turf Sprint) and the Diamond Jubilee (Turf Sprint) will all provide automatic berths into their respective Breeders’ Cup races.

The Wednesday at Royal Ascot is expecting to feature the continuing coronation of Cracksman in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes but my attention will be on the first race and the Wesley Ward-trained two-year-old that runs in the Queen Mary.

After the feast that is the Royal Meeting, attention will swing to the most valuable evening fixture to be staged in Britain at Chelmsford, whose prize money of £233,640 exceeds that of Sandown’s during the Brigadier Gerard meeting.

They are also staging their first Listed contest, with the inaugural running of the Queen Charlotte Fillies’ Stakes.

Chelsea Cloisters was the seventh of ten consecutive two-year-old winners that Wesley Ward had during the spring meeting at Keeneland during April.

To put that in perspective, Keeneland hosted 12 races for two-year-olds during the meet and in a surprise, Ward lost the first two.

This daughter of First Samurai was backed down to favoritism and didn’t disappoint on debut when pulling eight lengths clear and stopping the clock in the second fastest time of Ward’s ten juvenile winners – the fastest time was set by Shang Shang Shang who runs in the Norfolk on Thursday.

While her debut run was eye-catching her works on turf since have been impressive and Ward says that she is improving with each work.

More important this is the filly that Ward has entered in the Queen Mary - a race he has won three times in the past nine years. Chelsea Cloisters has drawn well in stall 14 – the gate that Lady Aurelia won this race out of in 2016.

Secret Art is looking for a hat-trick of wins at Chelmsford after stepping up to 10f for the first time last month and winning well in a tougher race than this.

That day, from stall 9, Silvestre De Sousa bounced Secret Art out of the gate and made most of the running in a time that was just outside the track record.

Jockey Luke Morris gets aboard him for the first time on Wednesday but from the draw of stall 2 he should get a good front-running trip through this race as none of his rivals, on paper, appear to want to go forward and challenge for the lead early on in the race.

Secret Art is also one of the few horses in the race who does not have to bounce back from a disappointing effort in his last race.

The inaugural running of the Listed Queen Charlotte Fillies’ Stakes features a strong field of 14 fillies and mares lining up over 7f and the one who jumped off the page was Lucymai, a four-time course and distance winner at Chelmsford.

She is officially the highest rated horse in this field by 6lb and the one previous time she stepped into Listed company she wasn’t beaten very far over a mile behind the French-raider Hunaina, who won a Group Three at Chantilly on Sunday.

That was over a trip too far and now back into Listed company over her preferred 7f should see this daughter of Multiplex bang there.

Trainer Dean Ivory could not be any hotter right now and while draw 11 is not a great around Chelmsford Lucymai can go from the front or come with a withering late run, so wherever Jack Dueren finds himself in the early part of the race is fine.

Mountain Bell looks the play in this 1m6f contest for fillies and mares.

She won impressively at Newcastle over an extended two miles in December in a Fast Track Qualifier for All-Weather Finals Day before going down by only 2 ¼ lengths behind Funny Kid in the AW finals itself.

Last time out she finished three lengths behind Funny Kid in the Group Three Prix De Barbeville at Longchamp, so the drop in grade and drop in trip should see Mountain Bell back in better form.

Being so highly rated she has to give a lot of weight away to her rivals but she went to the front and tried to make all in France and if Oisin Murphy employs the same tactics today from stall one she is going to take all of the beating.

Rachel's Wednesday selections: