NEWMARKET

As the name would suggest, Newmarket’s July Course, which has a one-mile straight known as the Bunbury Mile, is only used for Flat racing during the summer months. The action there gets underway in June and continues through until the end of August, with three days of high-class racing at the track’s July Festival the undoubted highlight. The most valuable race at the meeting is the July Cup, which is one of the most prestigious sprint races in the world and often decides who will be crowned the season’s champion sprinter in Europe. The Princess of Wales’s Stakes and the Falmouth Stakes, which has been won by popular names such as Soviet Song and Goldikova in recent years, are the feature races on the Thursday and the Friday of the meeting respectively, while the track’s popular music nights are always guaranteed to draw a big crowd.

Newmarket’s Rowley Mile Course is home to the first two classics of the British Flat season, namely the 2000 Guineas, which is primarily for colts, and the 1000 Guineas for fillies. They are staged over the final mile of the track’s 10 furlong straight – the longest of any racecourse in Britain – where the downhill run into the famous Dip can often unbalance an inexperienced horse, while the ensuing climb to the line puts a real emphasis on stamina. The Guineas Festival is the highlight of the spring programme at what is often referred to as the headquarters of British racing, before the action moves to the neighbouring July Course in midsummer. The season on the Rowley Mile starts again in September, and the following month sees the leading two-year-olds go head-to-head at the Future Champions Festival, with the Fillies’ Mile and Dewhurst Stakes often helping to identify the leading two-year-old filly and colt, respectively, of their generation.