British Champions Day: The countdown is on

British Champions Day has become one of the premier horse racing events on the annual calendar in a very short time. Established in 2011, British Champions Day is now one of the most important festivals of the entire racing season. In less than a decade, the event has become popular for bettors similar to other legendary festivals in the United Kingdom including the Grand National, Royal Ascot, and Cheltenham Festival. In the buildup to the big day of championship races, punters can visit the best betting sites for horse racing to wager on the horses they predict to win.

The 2020 edition of British Champions Day will be just as big as the previous versions and cap off another great season of flat racing. The countdown is on for the festival and the incredible races that will be run at Ascot Racecourse. The one-day race festival will be held on October 17th at Royal Ascot and bring another incredible racing season to an end.

What is British Champions Day?

British Champions Day is the culmination of the flat racing season and features the final races in the British Champions Series. There are races in five divisions bringing together some of the best and brightest horses, jockeys, and trainers. In 2011, the one-day festival was created to bring the racing series to an end and cap it off in an exciting way. Seeing how excited horse racing fans were for end of the race season festivals and meetings, organisers created British Champions Day to crown the best of the best over the course of the campaign. Since 2016, British Champions Day has been the richest single day in UK horse racing. The event will see £4.2 million in prize money up for grabs.

The biggest races at British Champions Day

Six races are run at Ascot Racecourse for the meeting with large prize packets handed out for each. The biggest horse race of them all at the meeting is the Champion Stakes which hands out a prize purse of £1.3m. It is followed closely by the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes which is worth a whopping £1.1m. The winner of the Champion Stakes will receive a healthy £737,320, which on top of prize money won throughout the racing season, is a lucrative way to cap things off. The one-day race meeting comes to an end with the day’s smallest horse race in terms of prize money, the Balmoral Handicap, which pays out £250,000. In spite of being a more recent addition to the horse racing calendar in the UK, British Champions Day has seen some of the biggest names in horse racing history win on Ascot’s hallowed grounds. One of the most famous wins in the meeting’s short history came in its inaugural year. Frankel ran to victory in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and followed it up a year later by besting the field in the Champion Stakes. Champions Day 2020 will see the best of the best at Ascot Racecourse racing for the biggest one-day prize purse in UK horse racing. The action all starts with the Long Distance Cup on October 17th.