Goodwood Racecourse Stand
Goodwood Racecourse View past main stand
Goodwood Racecourse is a horse-racing track five miles north of Chichester, West Sussex, in England controlled by the family of the Duke of Richmond, whose seat is nearby Goodwood House. It hosts the annual Glorious Goodwood meeting, which is one of the highlights of the British flat racing calendar, and is home to 2 of the UK's 31 Group One flat races, the Sussex Stakes and the Nassau Stakes.
It is considered to enjoy a very attractive setting and the meeting is very popular, despite not having the quality of horses to justify this popularity alone. One problem is that its proximity to the coast means that it can get very foggy.
This is an unusual, complex racecourse with a straight six furlongs - the "Stewards' Cup Course" - which is uphill for the first furlong and mostly downhill thereafter. There is a tight right-handed loop at the far end of the straight on which there are starts for various longer distance courses. These include the 1m2f "Craven Course", the 1m4f "Gratwicke Course" and the 1m6f "Bentinck Course". The start for the 2m5f "Cup Course" is quite close to the winning post - horses travel outwards on the straight, around the loop and back. Throughout the loop there are severe undulations and sharp turns. The course is used for Flat racing only.
From 1968 to 1970 the course's late summer meeting was shown on ITV, and from the early 2000s some races from the course occasionally appeared on Channel 4, but otherwise the course had been covered exclusively by the BBC for 50 years from 1956 (when it first appeared on television) to 2006. From 2007, the rights have passed to Channel 4 Racing.
Notable races
External links
Coordinates: 50°53′49″N, 0°44′33″W
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