Doncaster Races 2025

Family Fun Day 15th June 2025

Onestopracing visited Doncaster Races for the first time yesterday (Father’s Day, Sunday 15th June 2025) – the aim is to get round all the UK and Irish racecourses at some point, even if it takes a lifetime!

We thought it would be fun to share some of our photos of the course and our musings of the day with our loyal followers.

Access is fairly easy by car (M1, junction 32), M18 (junction 3/4), A1M junction 36 and the M62) and whilst the course is in a fairly built up area – the country lane leading to Cartmel this isn’t- getting into and out of the course didn’t take much time at all. Car Parking is free in Car Park C (apart from when the St Leger is on) and is no more than a 5 minute walk to the main entrance. For any families visiting, the family entrance is located off from this car park, so no need to walk down the road to the main entrances.

With it being Father’s Day and Family fun day it was fairly busy and apart from a bit of chaos with family tickets (children needed to get a separate ticket from the sales booth even if you had already booked online and even though they are of course free) and then queue up again to actually get in. That said the staff were all lovely and the process was swift.

The general enclosure (Grandstand) and food court area is huge (5 storey) – much bigger than I was expecting. The Food court (open to everyone) has plenty of indoor seating with large bar areas and some outdoor seating on a upstairs terrace with a good view of the course, the parade ring and the pre-parade ring. This makes tickets for these general areas offer really good value in my opinion.

The Grandstand also has plenty of hospitality suites and corporate/private dining options too.

For those of you who can tear yourself away from the racecard and like a bite to eat the food court offers decent pizzas, baked potatoes, chicken wings etc and decent coffee. The staff will happily fill up water bottles for you.

Prices for drinks and pints seemed fairly reasonable for a racecourse and again whilst there were big queues at some points they moved fairly quickly and we definitely didn’t miss any racing!

The vibe here is definitely friendly with a great mix of ages enjoying the races. Plenty had made some effort in terms of dress code (we’re not talking Royal Ascot obviously) but smart casual was the overriding choice of the day.

One of my favourite parts of going to the races is watching the horses in the parade ring. At Doncaster you can see the horses walking round the pre-parade ring from the stables ( a great place to earwig for bits of info from jockeys and owners!) and the parade ring itself. I thoroughly enjoyed watching these magnificent horses pre-race and managed to snap some pics of Keith’s boy Dutch Decoy. All the horses looked in excellent order and were beautifully turned out – watching them parade certainly didn’t make picking out winners any easier, they were all in grand condition.

Dutch Decoy

Now onto the racing. A straight track at Doncaster and most of the races were around 7f on our visit with the longest being a 1m3f. Despite it being a busy day and quite a large part of the area next to the rail having the fair rides and stalls/picnic seating for family day, we still managed to get next to the finishing post a couple of times.

The view was reasonable, although it would have been nicer to get a bit closer to the action at some points. The grandstand outside food court area offered a surprisingly good view for those of you who like a vantage point, whilst eating but without being in a corporate box.

There is also a really old grandstand with stone steps to stand/sit on in the family area (lots of pigeon droppings though so beware) and the old Clocktower stand really gives you a feel somehow for the history of this race course – there has been racing here for over 500 years, although I don’t think even the older stands are quite that age.

There are plenty of places to get your bets on with the minimum on most being a £2.50 e/w or £5 win – a fair bit of variation in prices on offer so worth a wander up and down to see where you can get best value.

There was very little distance between the winners and seconds in most of the races we saw and I’d say it’s one of the true/more fair racecourses suiting the speedier types especially in the shorter distances.

It is a big course and definitely has more of an “events” type feel than some of the other courses I’ve been to. Obviously a mid-week winter meeting might feel different again, but for those of you who prefer a smaller more intimate type of course usually Doncaster could feel quite different.

We had a few winners, 9/1 Follow your Heart, 7/2 Promise Time and my own pick of Duke’s Command 11/1 ( 2 courtesy of our very own ratings, picking the top rated horses).

There were plenty of fair rides and free entertainment (characters, colouring inside, magic tricks in the grandstand inside area) to keep little ones entertained. Fair rides ranged between £3 and £4.

For what was a busy day there were no issues at the end getting out of the car park and we were on our way swiftly.

I would definitely like to visit again and probably will try a mid-week winter day next time – just so I’m not torn between the horses and having to entertain little ones on the fair rides!