Craven Meeting

Newmarket's Craven meeting could just as well be called Anticipation Week. Anticipation is climbing the steps of a venerated football stadium for a night game to find the floodlights blazing and the grass slick and lush. It's the bounce of the England cricket team down the pavilion steps to start an Ashes series. It's checking your tickets the day before Wimbledon tennis starts or standing just after dawn beside the first tee at an Open Championship or Masters. It's not about what you know. It's about all the things you...

They're off and running at Newmarket, though not all of the runners have been in official races. The first day of the Craven meeting, a date anticipated with longing by those racing folk who dwell by that wind-blasted Heath, was ushered in by a Classic winner on the Rowley Mile.  While we have more than a fortnight to wait for the first Classic victor of 2023 to reveal himself, the 2021 Irish Derby winner Hurricane Lane (Ire) (Frankel {GB}) strode out with purpose under William Buick on the easy turf...

The Classic trials caravan rolls into Newmarket today with the Rowley Mile venue primed and ready to host a seven-race card and open its three-day Craven fixture. Sophomore fillies take centre stage on day one with nine set for another competitive edition of HQ's G3 Lanwades Stud Nell Gwyn S. over a straight seven furlongs. Middleham Park Racing's 2012 victrix Esentepe (Ire) (Oratorio {Ire}) is the only winner since the turn of the century to have undertaken a preparatory run, so the trends are not in favour of Scuderia Archi...

Newmarket's Craven meeting cranks up on Wednesday, with the G1 1000 Guineas aspirants tackling the G3 Lanwades Stud Nell Gwyn S. up the Rowley Mile that plays host to the May 2 Classic. As usual, the seven-furlong prep has some genuine prospects for the big occasion including Normandie Stud's TDN Rising Star Love Is You (Ire) (Kingman {GB}), who oozed class when beating the smart Gift List (GB) (Bated Breath {GB}) by 3 1/2 lengths in the Listed Radley S. on testing ground over this trip at Newbury in October....

The first day of the new season of racing at Newmarket will feature a race named in honour of the multiple Irish champion jockey Pat Smullen, who died last September at the age of 43. The Pat Smullen Memorial H. is a Class 2 contest for 4-year-olds and up on the opening day of the Craven meeting on Apr. 13. It is to be run over the Rowley Mile, where Smullen recorded his first British Classic victory aboard Moyglare Stud's Refuse To Bend (Ire) (Sadler's Wells) in 2003. The race...