Easterby collects Yorkshire clean sweep

It was a week to remember for Tim Easterby as his Habton-based yard landed a clean sweep at the Go Racing In Yorkshire Summer Festival, sponsored by Sky Bet.

The first accolade, achieved on Friday, July 25 at York’s evening meeting was the “£5k Trainers’ Challenge”, a new initiative for 2025.  As the first trainer to train five winners across five separate days, Easterby won a £5,000 bonus prize.  Dramatically, it was a dead heat in the opening race that provided the crucial win.

Easterby said: “It’s great to have incentives to encourage you to run your horses in Yorkshire, we’re very supportive of initiatives likes this.”

Next up was the leading trainer of the festival, sponsored by Goldsborough Hall.  With six wins, Easterby couldn’t be beaten after the fourth race at York on Saturday, July 26.

The Sky Bet-sponsored prize for the leading Best Turned Out yard award was also won by the Tim Easterby yard and they have won £1,000 to share between the staff, plus a pizza party.

Young apprentice Warren Fentiman was the Sky Bet leading jockey of the week at his first appearance at the Summer Festival.  He was riding at Ascot on the final day and so his prize was accepted by his boss, Richard Fahey.

Reflecting on the week, Ben Warn, Chairman of Go Racing In Yorkshire said: "After a prolonged dry spell, we managed to have rain on most days of the festival, but that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the racing crowd.  

“It’s been a great week to showcase everything Yorkshire has to offer, we’ve had some great racing, fun themed days and nights and a particular highlight was Graham Lee’s visits to both Catterick and Thirsk, where we saw the second running of the Injured Jockey Fund’s Graham Lee charity race.

“We’re delighted to see the £5k Trainers Challenge being won, it took nearly a full week to do, but was a fun way of incentivising trainers to run their horses in Yorkshire.”

Michael Shinners, Head of Sports PR at Sky Bet, added: “The week has been really well supported by Yorkshire trainers and the £5k Trainers Challenge initiative was well received by the trainers.

“The charity race at Thirsk was once again a huge success raising funds for Graham and the all-round fun factor has been felt by everyone.”