Masquerade Ball leads Japanese challenge in King George at Ascot

Masquerade Ball and Wurttemberg are set to carry a two-pronged Japanese challenge into the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, a 2,406-metre test scheduled for Saturday, 25 July. The race drew 37 entries at one stage before the field was pared down to 14 declared runners, and Japan’s pair give the meeting an international edge that goes beyond simple numbers.

Masquerade Ball is the more established of the two. Trained by Takahisa Tezuka, he arrives off a Tenno Sho victory and a close second in the Japan Cup, form that has kept him at the front of the conversation for one of Europe’s top Group 1 races. Online talk around the race has already linked him to a potential rematch with Calandagan, the horse that beat him by a nose in the Japan Cup, and that form line gives Ascot a clear plotline: whether Masquerade Ball’s finishing kick can travel as well as his record at home. His preparation has also been carefully managed, with Masquerade Ball photographed training at Sha Tin Racecourse in Hong Kong in April.

The wider Japanese campaign comes with recent Royal Ascot scar tissue. On the final day of Royal Ascot 2026, Satono Reve finished runner-up in the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes for the second consecutive year, with Almeraq landing the race in a photo finish. That result extended Japan’s frustrating run at Ascot and sharpened the focus on July’s King George, where the Japanese team will be judged not just on class but on how that class translates to Britain’s most exacting midsummer stage.

The King George has carried that weight since 1951, when Supreme Court won the first running, and it has grown into Britain’s most distinguished flat race. For Masquerade Ball and Wurttemberg, the issue is not only whether they are good enough, but whether the travel, the timing and the race’s 2,406-metre demands let them show it. Japan has brought numbers, form and intent; Ascot will decide whether those pieces add up to a breakthrough.