Horse Racing - All Weather Courses - Newcastle

Located in the heart of Newcastle in High Gosforth Park, Newcastle Racecourse is one of the most popular dual purpose tracks in the country hosting racing all year round.

The highlight of Newcastle’s year is the Northumberland Plate meeting in June, a three-day fixture that also includes the Gosforth Park Cup and the Chipchase Stakes. Those races are both valuable sprints while the ‘Plate’ – also known as the Pitmens’ Derby – is a two-mile handicap and often billed as a Northern Hemisphere Melbourne Cup.

Left-handed, oval. Newcastle switched from turf to all-weather during the winter of 2015/16, and like Wolverhampton, the surface it uses is tapeta. It differs from the majority of the all-weather tracks in that as well as a traditional oval, it has a floodlit straight mile course.

Left handed
Galloping
Flat

Tapeta

None

It’s a massive advantage to get anywhere near the fence in races on the round course at Newcastle, especially in an event like the Northumberland Plate, because the turns are long and, if you’re more than three or four deep, you’re forfeiting loads of ground. You need to be on a very good one to win from a wide berth. There’s a bit of a run off on the round track, too, where the ground tends to fall away from you quite steeply towards the initial bend. It’s a very fair track.