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Sorry Kempton, it’s time to consider new home for Boxing Day racing
new
Moving the King George VI Chase to Ascot would surely secure a better future for the contest, with no disrespect to Kempton Park and its efforts until now
Brough Scott
Saturday December 20 2025, 8.45pm, The Sunday Times
Ascot puts on a terrific pre-Christmas show. There were carols, a record 20,659 crowd, a 28-piece brass band, Father and Mother Christmas in a white horse-driven sleigh and a senior member of staff disguised as a scarlet festive pixie. There was a significant win in the career of Impose Toi in the Long Walk Hurdle and a super-gutsy Welsh victory for the Ogmore-by-Sea trained Deep Cave in the Howden Silver Cup. But there was also a harsh, unwanted but very necessary question.
Should this, rather than Kempton Park, not be the site of British racing’s biggest event of the winter, the King George VI Chase on Boxing Day? To even pose it as a question is seen as heresy to many but I ask it with no disrespect to the thrilling contest awaiting on Friday, or to the splendid efforts of the team at Kempton, let alone any lack of reverence for a race whose memory for me goes back to the days of Halloween and Galloway Braes in the early 1950s.
With Kempton’s whole future now in the lap of the building gods, the question is not just unwelcome but unavoidable.
Impose Toi with jockey Nico de Boinville winning The Howden Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot.
Impose Toi held off the competition to take victory at Ascot on Saturday
STEVEN CARGILL/RACINGFOTOS.COM/SHUTTERSTOCK
So walk with me down to the last fence on Friday and look back at Kempton’s now modest grandstand and compare it with what I saw from the same vantage point yesterday. Ascot had 20,000 on Saturday, 60,000 for the Gold Cup and at least 40,000 for each day of the Royal meeting. Kempton will be buzzing on Friday just as it was last year when 13,863 filled it with good cheer — in excess of 10,000 more than either its next best jump meeting in February or any of its 50 all-weather days, of which only six had gates into four figures. Forget immediate wrangles, and even different — although both racing dedicated — ownerships and think where, in ten years’ time, would be the most successful location.
That’s an uncomfortable preamble to what was a hugely reassuring day. Two teenagers came down to watch at the last fence and were as thrilled with the excitement of Harry Skelton driving front-runner Etalon up and over as they were delighted to discover he was riding for his table-topping brother Dan.
We had started with a return to form from this year’s Grand National favourite Iroko in a three-horse race in which the whole trio were in with a galloping chance at the final obstacle. It was only the tenth winner of Jonjo O’Neill Jr’s after an injury-delayed season but he showed plenty of his legendary father’s famous drive as he lifted Iroko four lengths clear of the favourite Firefox. Iroko is now the 8-1 favourite for next year’s National and before Aintree we may only see him in a Scottish warm-up at Kelso.
Impose Toi’s target is Cheltenham’s Stayers’ Hurdle and his third success of this campaign gives him a great chance of adding another notch to trainer Nicky Henderson’s extraordinary Festival record. The Long Walk is the most competitive staying hurdle of the year outside Cheltenham and with Beauport making it a good gallop before Sean Bowen pushed Strong Leader ahead, this was always going to hurt. But Impose Toi was in good hands. Nico De Boinville was 36 in August but he has put the years to good use and there was a serenity in the way he stalked up from the back to challenge at the last.
Horses and jockeys at the start for The Howden Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot Racecourse, with a large grandstand full of spectators in the background.
Strong Leader put in a good challenge in the Long Walk on Saturday but De Boinville on Impose Toi edged it
STEVEN CARGILL/RACINGFOTOS.COM/SHUTTERSTOCK
There is no point in having experience unless you use it. On the other hand if you land in front at Ascot with Sean Bowen beside you, every ounce of what’s left of your youth is needed.
Bowen has already ridden 160 winners this season, 92 more than the runner-up Harry Skelton, and this winnerless day was a rarity. But winnerless it was from an implacable De Boinville, who afterwards even allowed that he was, as Harry Kane would put it, “over the moon”.
Henderson was winning the Long Walk for the third time and his tribute as groom Rosie Harbour led Impose Toi away for the washdown was an example of the closeness that belongs between horse and all in the stable. “He’s grown up a lot and kept improving,” Henderson said of the seven-year-old. “He’s a lovely character because he does absolutely nothing at home — you’d despair at him some mornings.
“If a horse finishes behind him at home you want to start worrying. It’s extraordinary, but now we know it’s fine. He might want another run, I don’t know, we’ll see.”
Johnny Weatherby, Chairman of Ascot Racecourse, smiling in front of the Ascot Racecourse grandstand.
Tributes were paid to the long-running chairman Weatherby
GRAHAM HUGHES FOR THE TIMES
So we move on to a Kempton Boxing Day of goodwill from an Ascot afternoon which has long glowed and which on Saturday mourned the death last week of Johnny Weatherby, the lovely man who spent 23 of his 66 years as a trustee and chairman of the royal course. He was around for the days when if you got your little kids to the right place at the right time they could line up and get sweets from the Queen. One of mine is 50 in February. May jumping’s Christmas glow have 50 more.
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Moving the King George VI Chase to Ascot would surely secure a better future for the contest, with no disrespect to Kempton Park and its efforts until now
Brough Scott
Saturday December 20 2025, 8.45pm, The Sunday Times
Ascot puts on a terrific pre-Christmas show. There were carols, a record 20,659 crowd, a 28-piece brass band, Father and Mother Christmas in a white horse-driven sleigh and a senior member of staff disguised as a scarlet festive pixie. There was a significant win in the career of Impose Toi in the Long Walk Hurdle and a super-gutsy Welsh victory for the Ogmore-by-Sea trained Deep Cave in the Howden Silver Cup. But there was also a harsh, unwanted but very necessary question.
Should this, rather than Kempton Park, not be the site of British racing’s biggest event of the winter, the King George VI Chase on Boxing Day? To even pose it as a question is seen as heresy to many but I ask it with no disrespect to the thrilling contest awaiting on Friday, or to the splendid efforts of the team at Kempton, let alone any lack of reverence for a race whose memory for me goes back to the days of Halloween and Galloway Braes in the early 1950s.
With Kempton’s whole future now in the lap of the building gods, the question is not just unwelcome but unavoidable.
Impose Toi with jockey Nico de Boinville winning The Howden Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot.
Impose Toi held off the competition to take victory at Ascot on Saturday
STEVEN CARGILL/RACINGFOTOS.COM/SHUTTERSTOCK
So walk with me down to the last fence on Friday and look back at Kempton’s now modest grandstand and compare it with what I saw from the same vantage point yesterday. Ascot had 20,000 on Saturday, 60,000 for the Gold Cup and at least 40,000 for each day of the Royal meeting. Kempton will be buzzing on Friday just as it was last year when 13,863 filled it with good cheer — in excess of 10,000 more than either its next best jump meeting in February or any of its 50 all-weather days, of which only six had gates into four figures. Forget immediate wrangles, and even different — although both racing dedicated — ownerships and think where, in ten years’ time, would be the most successful location.
That’s an uncomfortable preamble to what was a hugely reassuring day. Two teenagers came down to watch at the last fence and were as thrilled with the excitement of Harry Skelton driving front-runner Etalon up and over as they were delighted to discover he was riding for his table-topping brother Dan.
We had started with a return to form from this year’s Grand National favourite Iroko in a three-horse race in which the whole trio were in with a galloping chance at the final obstacle. It was only the tenth winner of Jonjo O’Neill Jr’s after an injury-delayed season but he showed plenty of his legendary father’s famous drive as he lifted Iroko four lengths clear of the favourite Firefox. Iroko is now the 8-1 favourite for next year’s National and before Aintree we may only see him in a Scottish warm-up at Kelso.
Impose Toi’s target is Cheltenham’s Stayers’ Hurdle and his third success of this campaign gives him a great chance of adding another notch to trainer Nicky Henderson’s extraordinary Festival record. The Long Walk is the most competitive staying hurdle of the year outside Cheltenham and with Beauport making it a good gallop before Sean Bowen pushed Strong Leader ahead, this was always going to hurt. But Impose Toi was in good hands. Nico De Boinville was 36 in August but he has put the years to good use and there was a serenity in the way he stalked up from the back to challenge at the last.
Horses and jockeys at the start for The Howden Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot Racecourse, with a large grandstand full of spectators in the background.
Strong Leader put in a good challenge in the Long Walk on Saturday but De Boinville on Impose Toi edged it
STEVEN CARGILL/RACINGFOTOS.COM/SHUTTERSTOCK
There is no point in having experience unless you use it. On the other hand if you land in front at Ascot with Sean Bowen beside you, every ounce of what’s left of your youth is needed.
Bowen has already ridden 160 winners this season, 92 more than the runner-up Harry Skelton, and this winnerless day was a rarity. But winnerless it was from an implacable De Boinville, who afterwards even allowed that he was, as Harry Kane would put it, “over the moon”.
Henderson was winning the Long Walk for the third time and his tribute as groom Rosie Harbour led Impose Toi away for the washdown was an example of the closeness that belongs between horse and all in the stable. “He’s grown up a lot and kept improving,” Henderson said of the seven-year-old. “He’s a lovely character because he does absolutely nothing at home — you’d despair at him some mornings.
“If a horse finishes behind him at home you want to start worrying. It’s extraordinary, but now we know it’s fine. He might want another run, I don’t know, we’ll see.”
Johnny Weatherby, Chairman of Ascot Racecourse, smiling in front of the Ascot Racecourse grandstand.
Tributes were paid to the long-running chairman Weatherby
GRAHAM HUGHES FOR THE TIMES
So we move on to a Kempton Boxing Day of goodwill from an Ascot afternoon which has long glowed and which on Saturday mourned the death last week of Johnny Weatherby, the lovely man who spent 23 of his 66 years as a trustee and chairman of the royal course. He was around for the days when if you got your little kids to the right place at the right time they could line up and get sweets from the Queen. One of mine is 50 in February. May jumping’s Christmas glow have 50 more.
Sport
Horse racing
Horse racing and tips
Royal Ascot
Share
Save
Related articles
Glengouly wins thriller as racing honours Hunt family
BROUGH SCOTT
Glengouly wins thriller as racing honours Hunt family
December 13 2025, 10.00pm
Brough Scott
Comments
Comments are subject to our community standards and participation guidelines policy, which can be viewed here. By joining the conversation you are accepting our community rules and terms. Update your commenting notification settings here. Our policy is for readers to use their real names when commenting, find out more here.
Gary Manning
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