160 years on, ‘workhorse’ Ipswich ready for its annual standalone Saturday in the sun

For the most part, Queensland’s Ipswich region is known for rugby league, being home to Origin legend Alfie Langer and the Walters brothers.

The city, about 40km south west of Brisbane’s central business district, also lays claim to current teenage sprinting sensation Gout Gout.

Ipswich is less renowned for its racing, although five years ago, the racecourse was also the launching pad for Group 1-winning stayer Incentivise who would go on to win the 2021 Caulfield Cup.

The Toowoomba-trained stayer Incentivise announced himself as a star on the rise with a 9.5-length demolition in a 2500m restricted race in 2021.

Incentivise, whose career was cruelly cut short by injury, would string three Melbourne Group 1s together later that year, including the Caulfield Cup, and round out his spring with a second in the Melbourne Cup for trainer Peter Moody.

As a racing centre, Ipswich’s thoroughbred racecourse features on the schedule on an almost weekly basis, but rarely on a weekend.

Once a year, for its Cup meeting each June, the working-class city’s Ipswich racecourse comes alive with local punters looking for a good day out.

Saturday is the 160th anniversary of the Ipswich Cup, one of Queensland’s oldest races.

The area is also a major growth corridor for South East Queensland, with the region’s population last year increasing by 3.5 per cent, more than any other area of the state. Its population has more than doubled in a 20-year period, surpassing 275,000 in 2025, and it is projected to hit 500,000 by 2046 with a range of infrastructure developments in the works in a bid to cope with the influx of residents. 

Ipswich Turf Club chief executive Nathan Exelby acknowledges the important role the track plays in Queensland’s racing ecosystem.

“Cup day is our one standalone Saturday for the year. We’re quite open about the fact that we’re a product club. We’re a workhorse for the industry,” Ipswich Turf Club chief executive Exelby says.

“This year we had 46 race meetings, most of them midweek, and we accept that that’s our role in Queensland racing and we’re quite happy to do so. 

“But when the opportunity comes to have our one day in the sun, we’d like to make the most of it.

“Naturally, it’s just so important for the club, given we race on so many non-commercial days, that the Ipswich Cup is our big chance each year to make an earn.”

The Cup meeting punctuates Brisbane Racing Club’s winter feature races with the curtain to come down on the Group 1s next weekend with the running of the Tatt’s Tiara at Eagle Farm.

And it’s a meeting the local community continues to embrace.

“It hasn’t been run every year consecutively, but it is the 160th anniversary of the first one, which was run at a different spot up the road from where it is now,” Exelby says. 

“But it’s an event that resonates with the city and Ipswich City Council are supporters of the event.

“It’s been a rite of passage for a long time for people who turned 18 to go to the Ipswich Cup for the first time, so there’s a sense of ownership that the city has with the event and it’s something that’s a real mainstay on the annual calendar.”

This year’s Cup, one of three Listed races on the nine-race Ipswich card, has drawn a field of 15 acceptances (top weight Golden Path has already been scratched) and Exelby is the first to admit its one of the staying races that tends to feel the pinch in terms of quality.

But it’s not the case with the sprint races, the Eye Liner and Gai Waterhouse Classic, nor the $150,000 T L Cooney, a race for three-year-olds that does not carry any black-type status.

The country’s leading stables of Chris Waller, Ciaron Maher, Annabel and Rob Archibald, Mick Price and Mick Kent Jnr and Peter Snowden, as well as Brisbane’s leading trainer Tony Gollan, all have runners at Ipswich.

“It’s well known around Australia that there’s not a huge depth of talent in the staying pool, so by the time you get to Ipswich, it’s always a little bit problematic as to what might be left over after the (Brisbane) carnival,” he says.

“But for us to get a field of 15 this year, with the quality that’s up the top, we’re thrilled with a field like that. And then you go to the other two races, like the Eye Liner and the Gai Waterhouse Classic, they both consistently rate above their Listed status. 

“And then a race like the TL Cooney, which has got a reasonable amount of prize money associated with it, it’s rated to a black type status as well.

“If and when the Pattern Committee does reconvene, it’s a race that’s certainly ticked all the boxes for qualification for black type.”