Ripon Races set for first meeting of season tomorrowRipon Races is under starter’s orders for its first fixture of the new season tomorrow.
Yorkshire’s garden racecourse, as the venue is known, will be hoping for a smooth year after two years of covid restrictions severely curtailed activities.
Gates open at 11am for the first of 17 days racing this year.
Jonathan Mullin, hoping for an uninterrupted season at Ripon Races
Tomorrow’s Easter family day’s first race at 1pm will feature new sponsor Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate.
Jonathan Mullin, operations and marketing manager at the Boroughbridge Road racecourse, told the Stray Ferret:
“After two years of covid restrictions, we are looking forward to what we hope will be an uninterrupted season and plenty of racegoers through the gates.
“At a time when there is a squeeze on family budgets, we are offering reduced price entry to the paddock and club enclosures at all of our evening meetings The reduction will be 23% and 12% respectively.”
William Hill is maintaining its long-term sponsorship at Ripon.
This season’s running of the valuable William Hill Great St Wilfrid Handicap, on Saturday August 13, has added significance, with 2022 marking the 1,350th anniversary of Ripon’s patron saint founding the city’s cathedral.
New this season is a Stables Championship run in partnership with organic plant-based grooming products manufacturer, Goodbye Flys.
The stable staff of the yard that accrues the highest points total across the 2022 season will be crowned champions and receive a £5,000 cash prize, with £2,000 going to the runners-up and £1,000 to the third placed team.
Titanium Racing Club and Grantley Hall Hotel are both returning race sponsors and NE-Bet is continuing its sponsorship of the owners and trainers enclosure.
The covid vaccination programme
Ripon Races has been a key site in the covid vaccination programme.
Mr Mullin said:
“The racecourse management and course staff were proud to support the NHS and many volunteers involved in setting up and operating the covid vaccination centre here.
“Thousands of people received their jabs and boosters in the Wakeman Bar and we will continue to help the NHS when our facilities are required for the vaccination programme.”
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Final race of season at Ripon Racecourse
For racegoers, the 2020 season at Ripon has been a non-starter, with the action on course staged behind closed doors.
Today the lockdown season comes to a close with a seven-race card.
The COVID-19 pandemic shut down horseracing across the UK in March – a month before the course was due to hold its first meeting of the season.
When a curtailed calendar finally got underway on the evening of 20 June it, and all subsequent meetings, had to be held without racegoers present.
Before the coronavirus crisis dealt the horseracing industry a giant blow, Ripon’s garden course, in its 120th year at the Boroughbridge Road venue, was looking forward to a 17-meeting season.
Empty racegoer car parks tell their own story
In a normal year, the track attracts thousands of people through its gates – both local and from further afield – with the highlight of its calendar being the Great St Wilfrid Handicap in August.
As the season concludes with the 17.40 Lloyd Land Rover Ripon Apprentice Handicap, the public’s return to sporting events remains delayed, following announcements by the government.
The British Horseracing Authority (BHA), in a statement earlier this week, said that racecourses across the UK are facing a loss in revenue of between £250 million and £300 million this year, adding:
“Our industry is now facing a severe threat. We are the second most attended spectator sport in the country. Without the millions of people who normally enjoy a day at the races, many people’s jobs are at serious risk, as are the businesses they work in.
“We have kept the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments updated on the financial impact of COVID and the effects on the rural economies in which so many of our racing staff live and work.”
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Before the first behind-closed-doors meeting in June, clerk of the course and managing director of Ripon Racecourse Company, James Hutchinson told the Stray Ferret:
“There’s no point in looking back at what didn’t happen, we’d rather look forward and hope that it won’t be long before we can open our gates to racegoers once more.”
With the next season seven months away, all involved with running the course, are hoping the roar of the Ripon crowd will be heard yet again in 2021.
Ripon holds season’s biggest race behind closed doorsThe Great St. Wilfrid Handicap – Ripon’s most valuable race of the season and its biggest annual crowd puller – took place today behind closed doors.
With government restrictions on mass gatherings preventing racegoers from attending meetings across the UK, there was no roar of the crowd to be heard as the 19 thoroughbreds hurtled down the track, in the six furlong sprint.
As ever, the race attracted some of the leading sprint handicappers from the country’s top racing stables, but a sign of how the lockdown that has affected racing since March, came with the fact that prize money has been reduced.
Runners from the David O’Meara stable arriving at Ripon Racecourse earlier today
The total prize pot for the first six horses home in the Class 2 race was £39,348, compared with last season’s prize money for the William Hill sponsored sprint of £73,779.
This year’s winner was the 4-1 favourite Staxton, ridden by Duran Fentiman and trained by Tim Easterby. The 5-year-old gelding won £24,900 for owners the Ontoawinner 10 & Partner partnership.
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In the 120 years that the Boroughbridge Road track, widely known as the ‘garden racecourse’ has been holding meetings, it has never faced the kind of challenge that the coronavirus crisis has posed.
The season’s fixtures should have begun in April, but the first meeting staged behind closed doors, took place on the evening of June 20, with strict hygiene and social distancing measures in place for the limited number of jockeys, stall handlers, stable staff, stewards, course staff, satellite TV and media representatives allowed through the gates.
Ahead of the June 20 meeting, clerk of the course and managing director of Ripon Racecourse Company, James Hutchinson told the Stray Ferret:
“There’s no point in looking back at what didn’t happen, we’d rather look forward and hope that it won’t be long before we can open our gates to racegoers once more.”
He added:
“We simply hope to complete the fixtures through to the end of August as safely as possible for all involved and take it from there.”
Ripon has a horseracing heritage going back to 1664, when the first recorded races were held on Bondgate Green. Over more than 230 years, other venues were used for meetings and in 1723, history was made when the first-ever race for lady riders was held in the city.
On 6 August 1900, the current course held its inaugural meeting and since that time the racecourse has remained the city’s leading sporting venue, attracting local residents and visitors from far afield.