UK Horse Racing Tips

Kempton Park racecourse, in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, is best known for its Winter Festival, which features three Grade 1 races, namely the Kauto Star Novices’ Chase, the Christmas Hurdle and King George VI Chase. The last-named has been a fixture of the Boxing Day programme since 1947 and, in terms of prestige, is second only to the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Since World War II, some titans of the staying chasing division, including Arkle, Desert Orchid and Kauto Star, have won both races. That said, the chase course at Kempton is right-handed, practically flat and has relatively easy fences, making it a completely different test from the New Course at Cheltenham, which is left-handed, undulating and has notoriously stiff fences.

Having survived the threat of demolition, when the Jockey Club scaled down its proposed housing development programme, Kempton Park racecourse also stages 90 or so Flat fixtures throughout the year. In 2005, the course was closed for nearly a year for the construction of a floodlit Polytrack course, which was, in fact, the first right-handed all-weather track in the country.

The Flat course consists of two oval loops, with races over five, nine and ten furlongs staged on the sharper inner loop and those over all other distances staged on the outer loop. The principal Flat races at Kempton are the September Stakes, run over a mile and a half and open to horses aged three years and upwards, and the Sirenia Stakes, run over six furlongs and open to two-year-olds only. Both are Group 3 contests staged in early September.

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