Ascot Racecourse is delighted to announce the winners of this year’s Local Schools Royal Ascot Art Competition.
The annual competition, now in its fourth year, invites children aged between 4 and 14 to enter with six different age categories. This year entries were received from 18 schools in the Ascot area with over 3,000 online votes cast. The winners from each category were as follows:
- Ages 4-6 - Reegan Rogers, St Francis Catholic Primary School
- Ages 7-9 - Joo An Koo, Ascot Heath Primary School
- Ages 10-11 - Isabella Milner, Ascot Heath Primary School
- Age 12 - Maya Cirio, Ranelagh School
- Age 13 - Lottie Furst, Charters School
- Age 14 - Mya Debbinney-Wright, The Marist School
All the winners will be invited to the Saturday of Royal Ascot this year. The winning schools will also each receive £1,000 with the winning artists and runners up receiving £50 and £25 respectively in Amazon vouchers. Since launching in 2018, the initiative has seen total donations of £21,000 to local schools.
The 2021 artwork will be added to the Heath Tunnel gallery which connects Ascot High Street to the Heath which is located in the centre of the racecourse; making a colourful walkway for racegoers and the local community.
The winning images this year included a striking portrayal of triple Gold Cup winner Stradivarius from Lottie Furst and an imaginative piece from Mya Debbinney-Wright showing racehorses wearing face coverings.
Ryan Moore, one of the leading Flat jockeys in the world who has ridden more than 60 Royal Ascot winners, once again spent time selecting his favourite. Ryan, who is the Ascot Racecourse Supports Racing Ambassador, picked out five-year-old Reegan Rogers’ effort as his favourite, which showed a horse crossing the finishing line at Royal Ascot.
Ryan Moore said, “It was fantastic to be involved in the Local Schools Royal Ascot Art Competition once again and I was very impressed with lots of the entries.
“It’s great to see so many young people engaging with horse racing in this way and hopefully they will follow the sport for many years to come. If some of them don’t go on to become artists hopefully they might be inspired to work in racing.
“I was particularly impressed with Reegan’s effort which captured everything that makes Royal Ascot so special.”
All the winners, runners up and highly commended for each age group can be viewed here.
