2013 Newmarket July Festival

Newmarket’s July Festival is perhaps the most consistently classy Flat fixture, apart from Royal Ascot, in the whole of Britain’s racing calendar.

The quality of the racing is exceptional on all three days and some of the finest thoroughbreds from around the globe compete for their share of approximately £1.2m of prize money and the ultimate glory in some of the European summer’s top races.

Day 1 - Thursday, July 11

The opening afternoon’s highlight is the £100,000 2400m Group 2 Princess Of Wales’s Stakes. Other superb attractions on Day One include the £80,000 Group 2 1200m July Stakes and the £60,000 2600m Group 3 Bahrain Trophy.

Featured Races:

• Princess Of Wales’s Stakes (Group 2) 2,400m
• July Stakes (Group 2) 1,200m
• Bahrain Trophy (Group 3) 2,600m
  

Day 2 - Friday, July 12

The £180,000 1600m Falmouth Stakes (a British Champions Series race) is the center piece of Day Two of Newmarket’s July Festival and this Group 1 event, for fillies and mares, has been won in recent seasons by superstars such as Soviet Song and Goldikova. Two-year-old fillies with 2013 Classic aspirations will be in action in the £80,000 Group 2 1200m Cherry Hinton Stakes, while the fixture’s most valuable handicap is the £100,000 1200m Betfred Stakes.

Featured Races:

•  Falmouth stakes (Group 1) 1,600m
  

Day 3 - Saturday, July 13

With seven individual Group 1 winners standing their ground and four inter-continental challengers, Saturday’s Darley July Cup is shaping up to be one of the highest class and most international renewals ever.

The £500,000 Group 1 1200m Darley-sponsored July Cup is the third and final British leg of the ten-race Global Sprint Challenge and a key event in the sprint division of the QIPCO British Champions Series.  

Speed will be vitally important in several other races on the closing afternoon of the July Festival, as they include the £80,000 Group 2 1400m 32Red Superlative Stakes, for two-year-olds; and the £100,000 1400m 32Red Bunbury Cup, an invariably-competitive Class 2 handicap.

Featured Races:

• Darley July Cup (Group 1) 1,200m
• 32Red Superlative Stakes (Group 2) 1,400m
  

Newmarket Racecourse History

Newmarket has a rich history, with the town as we know it today dating back to 1200.

Its royal history in the 17th century saw it play an integral role of the lives of James I, who built the first grandstand on Newmarket Heath, Charles I, who was in residence here when the English Civil War became an inevitability, and in particular Charles II, during whose reign the entire court would relocate to Newmarket twice a year. What remains of his royal palace, Palace House, can still be found in the town today.

It was Charles II who did more than any other monarch to advance the sport of horse racing in this country - he instituted by Act of Parliament in 1665 the first race to be run in Britain under written rules and exported the name of Newmarket and the sport of horse racing to America that same year - and his love affair with Newmarket (not to mention with his mistress in the town, Nell Gwyn!) is well chronicled.

Past Darley July Cup Winners