Trainer Freddy Head has decided Moonlight Cloud will miss Royal Ascot, with the top-class mare having Deauville as her top priority.

Although a triple Group One winner herself and sportingly kept in training as a five-year-old by owner George Strawbridge, Moonlight Cloud is just as well known for getting as close as any horse ever managed to the wonder mare Black Caviar in last year's Diamond Jubilee Stakes.

She went on to land the Prix Maurice de Gheest and the Prix du Moulin and finished off with a weaker effort in the Breeders' Cup Mile.

Moonlight Cloud is once again entered in the Diamond Jubilee on June 22, but Head said she would miss the race.

"I am going to start her off in the Prix de la Porte Maillot at Longchamp in early July and then take her on to Deauville for the Prix Maurice de Gheest, which she has won twice already."

Moonlight Cloud scrambled home in the same event in 2011 before the first of her Maurice de Gheest successes.