Glorious Goodwood needs no introduction. The five-day Qatar Goodwood Festival presented by Visit Qatar— one of the great fixtures of the British summer— brings together the finest flat racing in the world, the most exquisite fashion, and an atmosphere that King Edward VII once described as “a garden party with racing tacked on.” Thirteen Group races. Three Group 1 showdowns. The sport’s elite, the South Downs backdrop, and a crowd that dresses for the occasion like nowhere else in the country.

And yet, on Thursday 30 July, the race that will stop the crowd before any of them has been run belongs to twelve women who are not professional jockeys.

This is the Markel Magnolia Cup — fifteen years old in 2026, having raised more than £3.5 million for children’s and women-focused charities since its launch in 2011. It opens Ladies’ Day as the first race on the card. And it does something no other race in Britain does.

What it takes

I was in the room at Goodwood House in April when this year’s riders were announced. What struck me first wasn’t the occasion — though Goodwood House is hard to be unmoved by — it was the atmosphere the twelve women brought with them. There was a charge to it. A particular combination of nerves and determination and courage that you can feel the moment you walk in, and that no amount of occasion-dressing could manufacture. These are not women from the racing world, not all of them anyway. Standing in front of cameras and doing press interviews is not everyone’s first language here. And that is precisely what makes it so powerful. They are doing something entirely outside their comfort zone — not just the riding, but all of it — and they are doing it anyway.

To get to that room, each of them had already committed to months of physical training, early mornings in unfamiliar yards on unfamiliar horses, and a competency assessment at the British Racing School that does not bend for anyone. They have fallen off. They have got back on. The Magnolia Cup has never asked its riders for perfection. It asks for the particular kind of determination that refuses to let the difficulty of a thing become a reason not to do it. Watching them, I understood that completely. I come from a riding background myself — horses have been part of my life for as long as I can remember, from childhood to horseback safaris across Africa and beyond — and still, standing in that room, I felt the weight of what they had taken on. And the pull of it, if I am honest, too.

Who they are

The twelve women racing on Thursday come from medicine, finance, media, construction, bloodstock and sport.

Alice Hawker is a bloodstock assistant underwriter for Markel International; Araminta Reed, a motorsport content creator

Charlotte Littlefield, an Australian racehorse trainer and broadcaster;

Gemma Owen, a TV presenter and dressage rider

Ilona Wells, who works in veterinary technology and has overcome both double hip resurfacing and a double mastectomy

Imaan Rasul-Healer, who works in the horse racing industry, based in Newmarket

Jasmine Watts, a construction loss adjuster

Jessica Chapplow, founder of Heartificial Intelligence and a Red Cross emergency responder

Joanna Bovis, a reconstructive microsurgeon at The Royal Marsden Hospital

Nermina Pieters-Mekic, who has recently recovered from breast cancer

Ruth Inman, a Riding A Dream Academy graduate

Victoria Wang, a bloodstock agent

Zoey Schorsch, an executive and creative director — and the first American ever to ride in the Magnolia Cup

“When I was younger, around age twelve, I was looking up Black jockeys because I’d never seen anyone mixed or Black racing horses,” says Ruth. “Khadijah came up in an article I was reading, and she really inspired me. I said, I’d love to get into racing and one day debut in the Magnolia Cup.” For Ruth, Thursday 30 July 2026 is that day.

None of them holds a professional racing licence. What they hold is something harder to define and considerably harder to earn — the willingness to say yes to something that most people would quietly admire from a distance and never attempt. And that, for anyone watching, is the whole point. When women who are not from this world step into it anyway — in front of tens of thousands of people, for charity, for each other — it permits other women to chase the thing that feels impossible to them. It doesn’t have to be a horse race. It just has to be the thing they have always told themselves is not for them.

The silks

Every year, the Magnolia Cup riders race in silks designed by a woman. It is a deliberate choice — one that mirrors the race’s founding principle that the stories being told here belong to women, and should be told by them. Previous designers have included Vivienne Westwood, Sarah Burton and Mary Katrantzou. This year, Goodwood has collaborated with Gabriela Hearst — Uruguayan-born designer, pioneer of sustainable luxury fashion, and TIME Earth Award honouree. A seventh-generation rancher raised on her family’s 17,000-acre ranch, Hearst drew on the House’s archive to reissue a series of prints, each representing a different chapter of the label’s history. Twelve riders, twelve silks, twelve stories.

“When The Duke of Richmond and Gordon invited us to participate in the design of the silks for the Markel Magnolia Cup, it was an instant yes,” Hearst said. “First, because any endeavour supporting women is a duty, second, because given The Duke’s creative direction at Goodwood, it would certainly be beautiful, and lastly, because it involves horses, which are such a deep part of who I am.”

The cause

Since 2011, the Markel Magnolia Cup has raised more than £3.5 million — and the charities it has supported have always reflected what the race stands for: women, children, access, opportunity. This year’s recipient is Education Above All Foundation, set up in 2012 by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser. It works across 77 countries with more than 18 million children and young people — specifically those who face the steepest barriers to getting any education at all. Children in conflict zones. Girls in communities where school is not considered their right. It is, in other words, a charity about giving people a chance they weren’t supposed to have. Which feels entirely right for a race built on exactly that premise.
“These remarkable women are not only taking on a personal challenge but also standing in solidarity with millions of children around the world who are denied access to quality education,” said Al Jazi Darwish, Director of Communications and Engagement at Education Above All Foundation. What happens on the home straight at Goodwood, it turns out, sends ripples a very long way beyond West Sussex.

The history

Fifteen years in, the Magnolia Cup has its own defining moments. The one everyone talks about is 2019, when Khadijah Mellah — a 21-year-old from London who had barely ridden before joining the Riding A Dream Academy — won. She became the first British Muslim woman to win a competitive horse race in the UK. It went everywhere. And what came from it matters just as much as the victory itself: the Riding A Dream Academy, which exists to bring young people from diverse backgrounds into racing, was directly inspired by that moment. Ruth Inman, one of this year’s twelve riders, came through that very programme. The race created the academy that trained the rider now lining up at the start. That is fifteen years of the Magnolia Cup, in one sentence.

Thursday 30 July 2026

The morning begins earlier than most racegoers realise. Before the gates open, the twelve Markel Magnolia Cup riders complete their course walk — a final chance to see the home straight on foot before they face it on horseback. Each then returns to get ready before being collected in their own individual car, the Gabriela Hearst silk that is theirs alone for the day displayed on the side. It is one of those details that says everything about how Goodwood does things.

Gates open to the public at 11 am. A champagne reception for the riders in the Winners’ Enclosure begins at 11:30 am. They mount at 12:55 pm. The race goes off at 1:10 pm.

After that, the full Qatar Goodwood Festival presented by Visit Qatar card takes over — the Qatar Nassau Stakes at 3:35 pm, live music on the Earl’s Lawn, the Veuve Clicquot bar on the Richmond Lawn. A trumpeter sounds before each race in the Richmond Stand. Racegoers can walk to the start for the second, fourth and sixth races, free of charge. And every day at 3:45 pm, in two enclosures, strawberries and cream are served — complimentary, unannounced, entirely Goodwood.

But ask anyone who has stood in the crowd for the Magnolia Cup, and they will tell you the same thing: nothing that follows quite compares to those few minutes on the home straight. Twelve women. Months of work. A cause worth racing for. And everyone who believed in them before the starting gun.

On Thursday 30 July, they race

The 2026 Qatar Goodwood Festival presented by Visit Qatar takes place 28 July – 1 August at Goodwood Racecourse, West Sussex. Tickets and hospitality here
Education for All
Riding a Dream Academy

Written by Emma Blunt for Luxuria Lifestyle International