Prize-money for this year’s Qipco British Champions Day at Ascot has been slashed by £1.7 million as the figures for the marquee October raceday were announced.
British Champions Day, which takes place on Saturday, 17 October, will be worth £2.5m, down 40 per cent from last year’s £4.2m.
The Champion Stakes will have a purse of £750,000, which makes it the most valuable race in Britain this year but worth substantially less than the £1.3m on offer in the 2019 contest won by Magical.
The Queen Elizabeth II Stakes has been dealt a similar cut, down to £650,000 from £1.1m, while the pot for the Balmoral Handicap has more than halved, with £100,000 available having been worth £250,000 last year.
Both the Champions Sprint and the Fillies & Mares Stakes have been cut to £350,000 (from £550,000) and the Long Distance Cup is now worth £300,000 (from £450,000).This will be the tenth year of British Champions Day and it remains Britain’s richest raceday, despite the cuts caused by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
