Bacio kept his Palace of Holyroodhouse Stakes victory after a dramatic Royal Ascot weigh-in scare that briefly threatened to turn one of the week’s most striking American wins into a stewards’ flashpoint.
The Wesley Ward-trained three-year-old had looked a decisive winner on the track, blasting clear under Juan Hernandez in Friday’s five-furlong handicap before the focus shifted abruptly from the finishing line to the scales. Hernandez initially weighed in light, prompting an objection from the clerk of the scales, but the result was allowed to stand after an overgirth missing from his equipment was found and included in a second weigh-in.
Bacio result stands after overgirth confusion
The incident has carried into the weekend because it raised an uncomfortable question for many racing followers: where does firm application of the weighing-in rules end, and where does common sense begin?
Paulick Report, citing the BHA stewards’ report, stated that Hernandez had been listed as carrying 131lb but initially returned at 129lb. The missing piece of tack was then located, with the stewards satisfied that Bacio had carried the correct weight during the race itself.
That distinction mattered. This was not a case of a horse running light from the stalls, but of equipment apparently being lost between the winner’s enclosure and the scales. Hernandez was still suspended for one day for weighing in without the full equipment with which he had weighed out.
For Ward, it was a much-needed Royal Ascot breakthrough after several quieter years at a meeting where he once set the standard for American juvenile and sprint raiders. Bacio’s success was his 13th at the royal meeting and his first there since Campanelle’s Commonwealth Cup in 2021. The stable’s 2026 Ascot team had already been part of the build-up on ReadHorseRacing, with Ward sending another transatlantic party into the week in search of a fresh landmark: Wesley Ward’s Royal Ascot runners for 2026.
A dominant win that nearly became something else
On the track, Bacio left little doubt. The son of Maclean’s Music was quickly into his stride and had the race broken open before the final furlong, beating fellow American runner Sandal’s Song by three and three-quarter lengths, with Ten Carat Harry best of the rest in third. America’s Best Racing reported the victory as Bacio’s third straight turf-sprint win and Hernandez’s first at Royal Ascot.
The nervy aftermath was also one more episode in a Royal Ascot week that produced high-class racing and more than its share of post-race discussion. Friday had already delivered two headline Group One winners, covered in our Royal Ascot day-four recap, before Bacio brought the card to a chaotic close.
By Saturday evening the meeting had moved on to Almeraq’s Jubilee Stakes thriller, covered in our Royal Ascot finale report, but the Bacio ruling still lingered because the stakes were so obvious. Had the stewards disqualified him, a clear-cut racecourse performance would have been replaced by a technical ruling with major prize-money and betting consequences. Instead, they preserved the result while still punishing the rider for the procedural breach.
It was a very Royal Ascot sort of storm: international, high-profile, tightly governed and watched by an audience that knows how much a few pounds at the scales can matter. Bacio remains the winner, Ward is back on the board, and Hernandez leaves with a first Ascot success that came with rather more drama than he could ever have imagined.
Image credit: Megan Rose Photography.
