Staged on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday in September at Ayr Racecourse in South Ayrshire, southwestern Scotland, the Ayr Gold Cup Festival takes its name from the highlight of the Scottish Flat racing season, the Ayr Gold Cup. Established in 1804, at the long-defunct Belleisle Racecourse, the Ayr Gold Cup has been run in its current guise since 1908 and is, nowadays, a prestigious and valuable ‘Heritage Handicap’, worth just shy of £100,000 to the winner.
Run over six furlongs and open to horses aged three years and upwards, the Ayr Gold Cup has a safety limit of 25, but is always heavily over-subscribed. So popular is it, in fact, that it has spawned a consolation race, the Ayr Silver Cup, for horses ballotted out of the main event and, more recently, a consolation race for the consolation race, the Ayr Bronze Cup.
Aside from the three, fiercely-competive sprint races, highlights of the three-day meeting include the historic Kilkerran Cup, a handicap run over a mile and a quarter and the feature race on day one, billed, unsurprisingly, as ‘Opening Day’. Day two, ‘Ladies Day’, features the Ayr Bronze Cup, plus two Listed level contests, the Harry Rosebery Stakes and the Arran Scottish Fillies’ Stakes; the former is run over five furlongs and open to two-year-olds only, while the latter is run over five-and-a-half furlongs and open to fillies and mares aged three years and upwards.
The Saturday, ‘Ayr Gold Cup Day’, features not only the Ayr Silver Cup and the Ayr Gold Cup, but also a full, supporting card, which includes the Listed Doonside Cup and the Group 3 Ladbrokes Firth Of Clyde Fillies’ Stakes. The former is run over a mile and a quarter and open to horses aged three years and upwards, while the latter – which has the distinction of being the only Pattern race run in Scotland – is run over six furlongs and open to two-year-old fillies only.