When legendary horse owner and breeder Ogden Phipps died in 2002, his black silks and cherry cap had been going to the post for seven decades. The native New Yorker was a Harvard graduate, a veteran of World War II, a former tennis champion, and the chairman of the Jockey Club.

Phipps bred and raced the great Buckpasser, a regally conformed horse so well mannered that when Richard Stone Reeves painted his 1966 Horse of the Year portrait, he reportedly said that if Buckpasser had been able to talk, he certainly would have invited Reeves into the stall with the offer of a cocktail and a comfortable seat.

The race named for Mr. Phipps, the Grade I Ogden Phipps Handicap, will be run over 1 1 /16 miles Saturday at Belmont Park, and the Phipps family’s longtime trainer, Shug McGaughey, should be in the thick of it. McGaughey began training for the Phipps family in 1985 – just in time to race another Phipps superstar, the filly Personal Ensign, who won this very race in 1990. This year, the trainer will attempt to snatch the prize in the Ogden Phipps with a filly named Daydreaming.

But McGaughey’s horse will have to nose out some serious competition to do it. Ashado, the reigning 3-year-old female of the year, is carrying the high weight of 120 in this race, though she is not running like the horse she was last year. In her first start of 2004, the Todd Pletcher-trained horse went off as the 1-2 favorite in the April Apple Blossom at Oaklawn park. She pressed the pace, tired, and faded to fifth. Next out, she was beaten by three-quarters of a length in the last 50 yards over a sloppy track in the Pimlico Distaff Breeders’ Cup Handicap.

That makes the reigning filly champ 0-for-2 coming into Saturday’s race. But she’s training well, and this could be her watershed.

Her biggest competition should come from Society Selection. The Allen Jerkins horse won two Grade I races in 2004 before flopping in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff and finishing last in the Shirley Jones Handicap at Gulfstream on February 19. But while Pletcher hopes that Ashado’s best race this year is still ahead, Jerkins seems to have turned his filly around: Society Selection won the Shuvee at Belmont on Preakness Day in 1:34.2, a stakes record. (Daydreaming grabbed the place in that race.)

These horses have met before. On June 26, 2004, Ashado and Society Selection went to the gate in the Mother Goose Stakes at Belmont. Society Selection finished sixth, 14 3 /4 lengths off the lead, while Ashado got caught by Stellar Jayne and placed 2 1 /2 back. They met again in the Alabama Stakes, and that time Society Selection took the prize while Ashado held on to show. At Lone Star in the BC Distaff, Ashado won and Society Selection was ninth.

Also running on Saturday will be Bending Strings and Society Selection. Expect Ashado to be out front in the early going, with Society Selection opening up daylight in the final yards while Daydreaming and Ashado duel for the place.

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While we were watching Afleet Alex run away with the Belmont stakes, our friends across the pond were polishing their shoes, snapping their cuffs, donning their morning jackets, and heading to the Royal Ascot festival, which features cards stacked full of the greatest horses in Europe for five days ending tomorrow.

Proving that the Brits are more flexible about turf traditions than we are, the Royal Ascot was moved this year to York. It’s the first time the festival has ever been moved, but considering they’ve been running races at Ascot since 1711, the place was probably due for some repairs. It makes me wonder why we had to wade through construction rubble at last year’s Kentucky Derby. If you can move the Royal Ascot festival, you can move anything.

Hundreds of thousands attend, dressed to the nines. Dress codes are so strictly enforced in the Royal Enclosure that even the BBC cameramen wear morning coats and top hats. Famed bookmaker William Hill was offering odds of 10-1 that the Queen would nod to the county by wearing England’s official flower, a white rose, to Ladies’ Day. That she would flub it and wear a red one: 33-1 (Prince Philip’s cap choice is fetching odds up 500-1).

At last year’s Ascot, the 300,666 attendees quaffed 150,000 bottles of champagne, 100,000 bottles of wine, 14,000 bottles of Pimm’s, 31.5 tons of smoked salmon, 7,500 lobsters, five tons of strawberries, and 2,075 kegs of beer. One betting house is predicting a 33% drop over the five days in the consumption of champagne, Pimm’s, and lobster. Northern folk, apparently, have a slightly rougher palate and go for pints.