Britain’s longest handicap race on the Flat – The Pontefract Marathon Handicap Stakes – is featured at Pontefract’s second meeting of the season on Monday (April 14). The seven-race programme is set to begin at 2-10 p.m. with a contest for maiden two-year-old fillies.
The Pontefract Marathon Handicap Stakes is contested just over two miles, five and a half furlongs and forms the second leg of this season’s Pontefract Stayers’ Championship, a series which incorporates all of the eight races for stayers during the season at Pontefract. Freddie Tylicki has ridden the winners of the last two runnings of this race (Kazbow last year) and Mr. Crystal (2012).
Sprinters have their opportunity in the most valuable race of the afternoon, The RIU Palace Meloneras Handicap Stakes over six furlongs offering prize money of £20,000. This contest is named after a hotel in Gran Canaria frequented on holiday by Norman Gundill, Pontefract’s Managing Director and Clerk of the Course. The first and second in last year’s race, the Yorkshire-trained pair of York Glory and Galician, both went on to record significant Heritage Handicap victories at Ascot – the Wokingham Stakes at the Royal meeting in June and the International Handicap in July respectively.
The ‘Postcode Lottery’ promotion for this meeting concerns those living in the YO (York & District region). See Pontefract’s website for details.
The giant screen will show all of the action on the track.