Town Plate begins 2016 July Meeting at Newmarket
Monday 27 June 2016 20:54, UK
Newmarket's Moët & Chandon July Festival meeting kicks off a week on Thursday with a special 'Newmarket 350' running of the Newmarket Town Plate.
A maximum permitted field of 15 runners looks on the cards for a race which has been moved from its usual spot in late summer to mark the start of the July meeting as part of the Newmarket 350 celebrations - it being 350 years since the first organised race meeting in the town known as Racing's Headquarters.
Boasting £1.6million in prize money for its 21 regular races, the three-day Festival culminates with the running of the £500,000 Darley July Cup on Saturday, 9th July.
By contrast, the Town Plate has an annual first prize of just £200 for the winning owner, epitomising the Corinthian roots of the sport.
In honour of the anniversary, the winning rider of the Town Plate will be awarded a specially commissioned copy of the King Charles II Challenge Whip, created by Spink Auction House, which also celebrates its 350th anniversary this year. The original artefact is kept in the Jockey Club Rooms in Newmarket.
All jockeys who compete are true amateurs - the race has been won by both an accountant and a neurosurgeon in recent years - and the rest of the prize package on offer to the winning rider is very much about tradition.
There is a Perpetual Challenge Plate, a silver photo frame, a voucher from the Newmarket High Street clothes shop, Goldings, and a box of Powters Celebrated Newmarket Sausages.
The 15 jockeys entered in this year's event hail from all walks of life and include Matthew Hancock, the current Paymaster General and MP for West Suffolk, as well as Newmarket Racecourses committee member Frances Stanley.
Other participants include Sheikh Fahad Al Thani, Roger Weatherby, the Senior Steward of the Jockey Club, and an unusual mother and son combination - Venetia Wrigley, wife of former Jockey Club Senior Steward Nicholas Wrigley, along with her son, Ed Wrigley.
Thought to have first been run in 1666, the Town Plate is run over a three-and-three-quarter mile course, much of which is only used for this single race each year but ending on the home straight of the July Course.
The 15 riders engaged for the 2016 running of the Newmarket Town Plate:
Sheikh Fahad Al Thani, Jason Carver, Patrick Chesters, Sara Ender, Rachel Flynn, Michael Gates, Ian Gault, Matt Hancock, Steve Hilyer, Derek Jackson, Alan Phillips, Frances Stanley, Roger Weatherby, Ed Wrigley, Venetia Wrigley.
