The eyes of the horse racing world will be on Newmarket Racecourse this month as the prestigious July Festival is staged.
The three-day meeting runs from Thursday, July 13, to Saturday, July 15, and features a plethora of top-class equine action.
The standout race is the July Cup on the final day, which is always one of the most thrilling spectacles of the flat racing season in the United Kingdom.
Read on as we look at the schedule for the 2023 Newmarket July Festival, before previewing what promises to be a truly thrilling event.
Newmarket July Festival 2023: Schedule & Preview
Thursday, July 13
1.50pm – The Bahrain Trophy.
2.25pm – The Bahrain Turf Club July Stakes.
3.00pm – The bet365 Handicap Stakes (Heritage Handicap).
3.35pm – The Princess of Wales’s Stakes sponsored by The Kingdom of Bahrain.
4.10pm – The British EBF Maiden Fillies’ Stakes.
4.45pm – The Edmondson Hall Solicitors Sir Henry Cecil Stakes.
5.20pm – The Handicap Stakes.
Friday, July 14
1.15pm – The bet365 Handicap Stakes.
2.25pm – The Duchess of Cambridge Stakes.
3.00pm – The bet365 Trophy.
3.35pm – The Tattersalls Falmouth Stakes.
4.10pm – The Weatherbys British EBF Maiden Stakes.
4.45pm – The Handicap Stakes.
5.20pm – The Handicap Stakes.
Saturday, July 14
1.40pm – The Rossdales British EBF Fillies’ Maiden Stakes.
2.15pm – The Bedford Lodge Hotel & Spa Fillies’ Handicap Stakes.
2.50pm – The bet365 Mile Handicap.
3.25pm – The bet365 Superlative Stakes.
4.00pm – The bet365 Bunbury Cup (Heritage Handicap).
4.35pm – The Pertemps Network July Cup.
5.10pm – The Handicap Stakes.
Newmarket July Festival 2023: Preview
The July Festival gets underway with Ladies Day, which features a heady mix of excellent racing, live entertainment and stunning fashion.
The seven-race card is headlined by the Group 2 Princess of Wales’s Stakes over 12 furlongs which has attracted a high-class field of middle-distance horses.
Top British trainer Charlie Appleby won the race with Yibir in 2022 and has entered several talented horses in this year’s renewal.
The Group One Tattersalls Falmouth Stakes for fillies and mares over one mile takes centre stage on Friday and should provide punters with a competitive betting heat.
Inspiral is the ante-post favourite with several new betting sites following her narrow defeat in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot.
Irish Pretty Polly Stakes winner Via Sistina could attract plenty of interest from punters having run out an impressive winner of the Pretty Polly Stakes at The Curragh last month.
The final day of the July Festival is all about the Group 1 July Cup, which remains one of the most important sprint races in the UK racing calendar.
Julie Camacho’s improving sprinter Shaquille could be in the line-up after proving his credentials with a stunning success in the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot.
Shaquille fell out of the stalls on that occasion, but jockey Oisin Murphy produced a riding masterclass to overhaul the well-fancied Little Big Bear in the final furlong.
Camacho’s husband assistant Steve Brown admitted he thought the horse had blown his chances at the start, but praised Murphy’s calmness under pressure.
“Your natural reaction is ‘this isn’t going to work out’ when you see a horse concede that amount of ground, but Oisin was just perfect on him, wasn’t he?” Brown said.
“He showed a wise head, really didn’t rush him and the performance came from the fact that the jockey was eminently sensible and every move he made was the correct one.
“I think without that we wouldn’t have won the race, so great credit to Oisin.”
Shaquille’s success left many punters cursing their luck having backed Aidan O’Brien’s Little Big Bear as if defeat was out of the question.
Jockey Ryan Moore did not cover himself in glory on that occasion, making too much use of the horse and leaving nothing in the tank for the final stages.
O’Brien has won two of the last five editions of the July Cup and will fancy his chances of reversing the form with a horse he rates extremely highly.
The Michael Dods-trained filly Azure Blue could be a big danger having won on four of her previous five visits to Newmarket.
Azure Blue was an impressive winner of the Duke of York Clipper Stakes at York in May and Dods believes she is on a par with the best sprinters in Europe.
“Everything has been straightforward since York and we have just been ticking her along,” Dods said. “She wasn’t in at Ascot and we have just been building her up for Newmarket.
“Paul Mulrennan (jockey) has been in and sat on her a couple of times since York and he is pleased with her.
“Highfield Princess ran her heart out in both races at Ascot so I think the York form is pretty solid and you can’t knock what the Julie Camacho horse did at Ascot.
“We don’t push these fillies – we bring them along steadily and we find they repay us in the end by doing that.
“She keeps surprising us with what she is doing, especially at York last time when she travelled through the race well and then how she put it to bed. I think there is more improvement to come.
“We just want to go there in as a good a form as we can and make sure we run a big race.”
