To get a picture of what it takes to win at Ascot, and especially in any of what the British call “Group 1” (in American racing parlance, Grade 1) contests, we need only look at Orthodox’s fine musculature in the sumptuous Alan Crowhurst shot of his victorious finish in Day 5’s Norfolk Stakes, above. Rossa Ryan is in the irons guiding Orthodox to the win; but focus for a moment on the equine athlete’s airborne moment sailing down in the perigee of his last stride. Just because he’s finishing a stride in the Crowhurst shot doesn’t mean his work is done; on the contrary, he’s bunching up to prepare for another launch.

He’s brought his hind legs resolutely forward to land, and his power source, that mightily-muscled rump, is poised to fire him forward the second his rear hooves touch the ground. That explosion will raise his chest at the same time that his forelegs will claw up into the air again to gain another apogee in the next stride’s arc. This run, and this shot of it, are things of beauty, and they go to the heart of why the British Royal family have sponsored Royal Ascot for the last three hundred years. Pictured below, the beautifully worn boots of an unnamed rider from a royal stable and his runner’s finely nourished musculature on Day 5.

What would Day 5 be without the King and Queen closing things out? Yes, there was the Royal Procession. Pictured below, Charles III deep in conference with Sir Francis Brooke, the Chair of Ascot Authority Holdings, Ltd. and the man who, among many other delicate tasks, oversees the operations and not least, the guest list, of the Royal Enclosure.

A social and sartorial note: This superb and highly specific candid by the AFP’s Henry Nicholls tells us much because the photographer caught the king’s determined, serious mien. Whatever else he may be, Charles III is a good listener and has the force of his considerable wit about him, and here, in the very teeth of Royal Ascot’s social whirl – which is, in fact, a massive philanthropic enterprise in that virtually the entire profit of the week goes to charity – Charles is especially serious with his chief lieutenant, Sir Francis. That is some business that the gentlemen are discussing.

If we add to that the details of the king’s formal day kit that this portrait affords us – from the summery light-grey suitings to the tight parabola of the rolled brim on the topper and the breathtakingly precise double-dimple in the tie, which clears the neckband of the blaze-white collar to frame and lift the face – we can fairly observe that this no-nonsense, refreshingly outspoken British king looks ready for business. Of any sort or description.

No moss, but long tons of embroidered floral motif in silver and blaze gold have gathered on Flora Macdonald Johnston, via her superbly cut suit, pictured above on Day 5. The former Financial Times and Vogue writer and editor – currently the fashion director at Koibird, a retailer in Central London’s Marylebone – clearly has an eye for detail: Those bright little applique blooms asymmetrically studding the skirt and lining the pocket flaps of the jacket outshine even the lush peonies in the background. Unknown is whether they are daisies, or more historically political Jacobean white roses.

Because: This Flora Macdonald Johnston is eminently Scots, her family house is in Aberdeenshire, the eastern jut of Scotland into the North Sea just below the Firth of Forth, or as she once put it in an interview, “at the ass end of nowhere.” That beloved family place is just a stone’s throw across the northern reaches of Scotland from the Hebrides, where Flora Macdonald Johnston’s famous 18th-century namesake, Flora MacDonald, is buried on the isle of Skye. The 18th century heroine was was a central actor in helping to save Bonnie Prince Charlie (the Jacobean prince Charles Stuart) from the British forces after his, Charles’ loss to the British at the Battle of Culloden. MacDonald booked the boat and sailed with the prince and a small entourage to Skye on June 28, 1746 – considered a great coup to this day, despite it landing MacDonald in the Tower of London after her own arrest. No, she was not beheaded.

Unknown is whether the current Flora Macdonald Johnston is descended from her ferociously patriotic namesake – pictured above is the 1749 Allan Ramsay portrait of the noble Scotswoman that hangs in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. However the MacDonald/Macdonald DNA has worked its way down in Scotland over the last three centuries, it’s safe to say that Flora Macdonald Johnston seems to have been aptly named – she shares an indomitable serenity-in-ferocity with the Scotswoman lovingly rendered by Ramsay above.

Sometimes, it’s just plain bracing to see that the old, bad habits of legendary drinker-and-smoker Winston Churchill are being lovingly cared for in today’s increasingly sleek and all-correct Britain, especially at contemplative moments of recreation, as the more serious British racegoers view a day at Royal Ascot. Pictured above, the hardworking AFP shooter Henry Nicholls produces yet another fine portrait in his shot of a young handicapper luxuriating in the Zenlike smoke-wreathed focus required to select just the perfect and perfectly-priced mounts to back in the next race. Because: Those British bookmakers. You cannot go unarmed among them without, like a sheep, being roundly fleeced.

The highly agile Alan Crowhurst has done us a great favor by bringing concrete cloakroom evidence of the many social and administrative challenges that the (famous) Royal Ascot costume edicts require in order to be properly met. For instance: the twinned projects of drinking, while keeping track of your beaverskin. Both are obligatory, simultaneous modes of behavior at Royal Ascot, especially so in the various “enclosures,” at the very pinnacle of which is the Royal Enclosure.

You’ll notice that, while actually “racing,” the king offlays his iconic beaverskin in the Royal Box. The ladies in attendance, very much including the Queen of course, do not. What to do? Well, the gentlemen need a place to park the lids because, the social froth in the Royal Box or in any other Royal Ascot enclosure can get quite demanding, and there are many, many black or grey toppers in attendance. One seven-and-a-half topper in black looks quite like another.

Did we mention that the “Ascot” top hat, bespoke in dove grey, retails for USD $833.93 currently at Lock & Co., in St. James’s? Those lids don’t grow on trees. It’s not kind of accessory you’d really like to lose tossing it aside as required in an Ascot box.