Shot! Ladies’ Day at Glorious Goodwood 2017
Inclement weather and a lack of glamour meant it wasn’t quite as glorious as expected

Often referred to as the most beautiful in the world, Goodwood racecourse was first laid out in 1802. 215 years later it’s still going strong and is the venue for one of the most highly anticipated social events of the English summer, Glorious Goodwood.

Since 2005, the five days have officially been renamed the Qatar Goodwood Festival as part of a major sponsorship deal that has injected millions into the event and raised its purse so that it now attracts some of the best horses, jockeys and trainers to the Sussex Downs. It may have a new name, but not surprisingly everyone still refers to it as Glorious.

Some 25,000 racegoers make the pilgrimage on each of the festival’s five days, most dressed to impress. For me, Ladies’ Day, on the Thursday is the standout day— I’ve been coming every year since 2011. And each year, whilst much remains the same, there’s always something that’s unexpected.
Indeed, with the vagaries of the British summer, the only thing that is predictable about Glorious Goodwood are the strawberries and cream, which unlike Wimbledon are both generous and complimentary.

Last year’s Ladies’ Day, it has to be said, was a bit of a washout and this year looked like it was going to be a repeat performance. The day before, 50mm of rain fell — that’s two inches! — in just 12 hours and the racecourse was battered by 40mph winds! The going threatened not just being difficult for the horses, but also a challenge for those saddled with high heels.

Although there were showers, it was the wind that really caused problems. For most of the women, it was a case of hang onto your hats and your fascinators. The pose of the day was a bent arm, with one hand permanently holding the brim to ensure it didn’t fly away.

Being that much of the time the weather was more wintry than summer, it was only fitting that under a moody sky the horse that won the biggest prize of the day — a whopping £267,360 — was a grey filly named Winter.

The previous day’s downpour had clearly influenced what most people wore. Compared to previous year’s there were few extravagant oversize hats on parade. In fact, there was distinct lack of glamour at this year’s Ladies’ Day.

The usual scattering of ‘slebs’ and junior royals were noticeably absent. Indeed, I didn’t spot any. Not one of the ‘celebrity’ riders in the ladies charity race, the Magnolia Cup, was in danger of being recognised on the street and rather than an A-lister like Tom Cruise or Rowan Atkinson, the Magnolia Cup was presented by the race sponsor, Nadja Swarovski.

Another huge absentee was Artemis, Nic Fiddian-Green’s iconic horse head sculpture was no longer on its plinth in the Richmond Enclosure where it had been since 2011. Whatever reason for its departure, surely something else could have been put in its place. Perhaps in future a sculpture could be commissioned like the one that appears in front of Goodwood House for the Festival of Speed.
There’s nothing they can do about the weather, but for me Goodwood need to find ways of making the visitor experience that little bit more experiential.
I also think Goodwood need to look at attracting younger people to racing. As well as putting on a special race for teenage jockeys, they could introduce a bunch of other things to appeal to a younger audience for whom horseracing is considered ‘old-fashioned’.
Whatever happens, Glorious will return next year. Let’s hope the bad weather stays away and the glamour reappears.

Behind the image: All these images were shot handheld with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 using only the 75 1.8 lens. My images of the day reflect a skittish approach to my shoot. My first port of call when I arrived was the Goodwood shop, but apart from a few ties, there wasn’t much that was new to photograph, although I did get distracted shooting some Goodwood pencils. From there, my intention was to seek out people wearing brightly coloured outfits, but the weather put paid to that, so I ended up with a bunch of disparate images. Whilst they probably tell the story of my day, it wasn’t the story I was hoping to tell, but that often happens with photography. Conditions go against you, things you planned to shoot don’t materialise and opportunities that you were expecting don’t happen. The key is to keep looking, to seek out something that’s going to make the day worthwhile. Both the absence of Artemis and dealing with the windy weather also adversely affected my day. Usually, I seek out interesting looking people and use the plinth as a plain backdrop for my portraits. With it gone, there was nowhere else to shoot people against and the wind meant everyone was seeking cover, rather than braving the elements outside. Despite the challenges, I still came away with a bunch of images that I really like, none more so than the shot of what I think was the most attractive hat I saw all day. In fact, that one image alone was worth the effort. I also got a few portraits that I’m really happy with. All were unposed, with my subjects unaware I was shooting them. That’s a completely different approach from how I’ve shot Glorious before, so this set of portraits have a different feel to them compared with my images from previous events. I think that comes down to the simple fact that when people are unaware they’re being photographed they don’t ‘pose’ for the camera. And, inevitably that makes any portrait that much more natural. Shot at Goodwood Racecourse on 3 August 2017.


