Glorious Goodwood - by Cornelius Lysaght
With Glorious Goodwood set to begin on Tuesday 26th July and Opulence Thoroughbreds set to have several runners, Cornelius Lysaght has provided us with a summary of what we can expect from the Glorious festival.
Perching in the hills high up above the cathedral city of Chichester, Goodwood is renowned as one of the most spectacular racecourses on the globe, let alone in Britain.
The track itself snakes its way across the rolling, lush greenness of West Sussex, while the view from the back of the well-appointed stands, across the waters of the Solent to the Isle of Wight, is, well, glorious.
Any globetrotting racing enthusiast will have a view, but I’d say that no list of the most picturesque racecourses in the world is complete without Goodwood featuring alongside say Santa Anita, California and its mountains and Happy Valley, amongst the skyscrapers of Hong Kong.
Equally, Goodwood would probably be joined by Cheltenham, Chepstow, Hexham, Killarney and Sligo in any beauty contest based solely on Britain and Ireland – if you’ve missed out on any of those, perhaps we need to persuade members of the Opulence team to spread their wings.
But, back at Goodwood, the breath-taking nature of the sprawling stage on which horse races have taken place since the very early 1800s does also present its challenges.
The runners must negotiate a complicated course that goes up, down and around – in day four’s long distance handicap they start in front of the stands and go the ‘wrong way’ up the track before looping back – and there can be few other racing arenas to match the number of hard-luck stories.
Witnessing runners becoming trapped in pockets and unable to ‘get a run’ – usually the one I’ve backed – is commonplace, as are barging matches as one or more horses struggle to cope with the bends and cambers.
The test is such that a jockey-friend always says that if there are going to be fisticuffs in the weighing room, it’s almost always at Goodwood.
The stewards find themselves working over-time, and the number of suspensions handed down for riding offences can spiral, so much so that a shrewd jockey is able to find their pockets bulging on departure with more than just the high levels of prize money on offer since the sponsorship of Qatar started in 2014.
A changing room sweepstake on the number of ‘days’ [of bans] that will be handed down over the thirty-eight races that take place between the Tuesday lunchtime and late afternoon on the Saturday has been known to take place.
The trick used to be to remember that the very last of the week was for apprentices only – it’s gone nowadays – and because of the obvious lack of experience that was sure to mean at least ten or twelve more days would be handed down, so the yellow jersey in the sweep regularly changed late on.
Until the 1960s, Glorious Goodwood was sole fixture of the year at the course, located on the 12,000 acre estate owned for centuries by the Dukes of Richmond, and it took place over just four days, Tuesday to Friday, until being stretched into the weekend in 1970.
From much earlier, when King Edward VII was a regular, it had become a big date in the calendar of sporting and social occasions coming together, with fashion playing a significant part as it still does – for men that has often revolved around a linen suit and Panama hat, while women continue to be encouraged to dress in a style that is seen as “fun but chic”.
There has been plenty of chic about the quality of racing over the years with some of racing’s greatest names seen in action, particularly in the highlight races, the Goodwood Cup, the Sussex Stakes and the Nassau Stakes, all now Group One-level prizes.
And, in 2022, with Stradivarius likely to seek a remarkable fifth Goodwood Cup victory before retirement, and the unbeaten Baaeed on target for a clash with the 2000 Guineas winner Coroebus in the Sussex Stakes, there should be plenty more glorious action.
Glorious all round in fact.
