2025 QIPCO Champion Stakes crowned joint-best race in the world

Last year’s pulsating QIPCO Champion Stakes has been named the joint-best race in the world for 2025 at the annual Longines World Racing Awards.

The contest was billed as an all-star showdown in the lead-up and it lived up to the hype, as the world’s best racehorse Calandagan showcased his sublime talent in taking the £1.3 million race for trainer Francis Graffard, jockey Mickael Barzalona and owners Aga Khan Studs SCEA. Godolphin’s Ombudsman was second, with Almaqam third and Delacroix fourth.

The average rating of those first four horses means that the 2025 QIPCO Champion Stakes was given a race rating of 126.25, level with the 2025 Japan Cup in Association with Longines.

With Juddmonte’s Field Of Gold running in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes (sponsored by QIPCO), five of the top 14 turf horses in the world ran on QIPCO British Champions Day.

That mile contest was the joint-60^th best race in the world last year, with the QIPCO British Champions Long Distance Cup (joint-83^rd) and the QIPCO British Champions Fillies & Mares Stakes (joint-92^nd) ensuring that four of the top 100 races in the world were run on Britain’s richest raceday. This was also the joint-most races in the top 100 on a single raceday, alongside the 2025 Longines Hong Kong International Races in December.

Accepting the award, Dido Harding, Senior Steward of The Jockey Club, said: “Thank you on behalf of all of the shareholders in QIPCO British Champions Day – The Jockey Club, Ascot, Goodwood, Newbury, York, ARC, and Great British Racing. This is British racing genuinely collaborating together, this is something that’s been long in the making. We all stand on the shoulders of giants and for the people who had the vision to create QIPCO British Champions Day, this is an amazing moment to be recognised as one of the world’s two best races of the year.

Felicity Barnard, CEO of Ascot Racecourse, added: “The quality of the racing we saw on QIPCO British Champions Day was something to behold. To see Calandagan win having won the King George the same year topped off a fantastic season for our racecourse. To be recognised also acknowledges the hard work that the team have done to put this raceday on, which is extraordinary and a very big feat, so well done to the team too.

“We would like to say thank you to David Redvers and to QIPCO for their long-standing and very valuable investment, not only in this day but in British racing as a whole. They are friends and partners, and there is more to come from this raceday as well.”