Queensland Cup returns to spring date

Monday 20 July 2020, 3:55pm

The Listed Queensland Cup will return to its traditional timeslot as part of a revamped spring carnival but at a much shorter distance.

The Cup was run in the Queensland spring for more than 100 years and is one of the oldest races in the state.

It was one of the few remaining 3200m races in Australia but will now be run at 2200m.

The race was moved to the winter a decade ago after the Brisbane Cup was shortened to 2400m.

Racing Queensland was criticised for severely slashing the winter carnival but hopes a revamped spring can boost interest in the sport.

There will be seven weeks of feature races starting on August 29 and going through to October 10 when the Queensland Cup will be run at Doomben.

In a major change, the Weetwood Handicap and the Toowoomba Cup will be run at Toowoomba on September 26.

The Weetwood-Toowoomba Cup had been run in April also for nearly 100 years.

The move is to coincide with Toowoomba's Carnival of Flowers festival.

The showpiece Spring Carnival day will also feature the Pat O'Shea Plate and the Toowoomba Guineas.

Other major features include the Listed Brisbane Handicap on September 12 and the $125,000 Gold Coast Pink Ribbon Cup on September 16.

Now in its 13th year, the Pink Ribbon Cup has become Australia's largest official community fundraiser for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

"A Spring Carnival is an exciting addition to our racing calendar," Racing Queensland chief executive Brendan Parnell said.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »