Glorious Goodwood 2018 The Qatar Goodwood Festival, better known as ‘Glorious Goodwood’ is one of the highlights of the summer racing season in Britain. The five-day festival takes place during the same week each year as the Galway Races and boasts three Group 1 contests and a host of other prestigious races. This year's event runs from Tuesday 31st July through to Saturday 4th August and once again promises to provide some of the highest class flat racing of the season and will see attendances of over 100,000 people across the week. Last year's Goodwood Festival threw up some very surprising results including winners priced at 100/1, 50/1 and 33/1 - and that was only on the first day. All told there were eight winners across the week priced at 20/1 or bigger. Bookmakers didn't have it all their own way as twelve favourites also scored over the Festival including five on the third day highlighted by the success of Winter in the Group 1 Nassau Stakes. Predicting 100/1 winners like Thechildren'strust which landed a maiden on its racecourse debut last year is no easy task but besides those outliers Goodwood tends to be a better than average meeting for favourites and sites like The Winners Enclosure which provide their own Goodwood tips, previews and build-up can help in narrowing down the fields. As Goodwood falls in the middle of the Flat season the form is often more reliable than in the Spring as the majority of runners have several outings under their belts and the ground doesn't tend to be too extreme. Races like the aforementioned Nassau Stakes, Tuesday's Goodwood Cup and Wednesday's Sussex Stakes are invariably won by horses towards the head of the betting while there is more of a lottery feel to some of the handicaps such as Saturday's cavalry charge, the Stewards' Cup over six furlongs. The six furlong track at Goodwood is mainly downhill and horses drawn middle to high have a slight advantage in bigger fields but for races like the ultra-competitive Stewards’ Cup a watching brief is best advised.
