Wellington Cup
horse race
The Wellington Cup is a Group 3 Thoroughbred horse race in New Zealand held annually in January by the Wellington Racing Club at Trentham Racecourse in Trentham.
History
Inaugurated in 1874, the Wellington Cup has been raced over various distances:
2 miles : 1874-1889
1+1⁄2 miles : 1890-1941
2 miles : 1942-1973
3200 metres : 1974-2008
2400 metres : 2009-2015
3200 metres : 2016 onwards
There were two prior Wellington Cups in 1867 and 1868. These were unofficial events run by the first Wellington Jockey Club and not recognised by the NZ Turf Register.
The Wellington Cup is one of New Zealand's most famous and popular races and it generally offers stake money which belies its Group Three status. Wellington Cup day attracts large crowds to Trentham Racecourse and the other races on the card have include the Group Three Desert Gold Stakes and the Douro Cup. In the past years the Group One Thorndon Mile was on Wellington Cup day, it is now raced a week earlier along with the Trentham Stakes.
The Wellington Cup was a Group 1 race until 2008. Given the prestige of the race, there was some disappointment at the news that the race would lose its Group One status from 2009. The Wellington Racing Club responded to the downgrade by reducing the distance to 2400 metres in order to attract a higher quality field. However, the race reverted to 3200m from 2016 to help encourage New Zealand stayers.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wellington Cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.