Leading owner Bill Gredley donates £50,000 to Newmarket coronavirus fund

Owner Bill Gredley has donated £50,000 to Newmarket's Covid-19 Fund to help local residents during the coronavirus pandemic.

The property developer won the 1992 Oaks and St Leger with User Friendly, the 2017 Gold Cup at Ascot with Big Orange and more recently his colours have been carried by Group 1 scorer Pretty Pollyanna.

Gredley's donation was made through his company, The Unex Group, to a fund managed by Newmarket Festival, a community group that is collaborating with the town council, as well as other organisations including the Jockey Club, the Racing Centre and Godolphin.

"It will make an enormous difference to our work, particularly as we don't know how long we'll have to do it for. It will require a lot of funding if we have to budget until June," said Mark Edmonson, chair of the Newmarket Festival, which has been fundraising for 11 years and hopes to convert into the Newmarket Charitable Foundation.

"His [Gredley's] donation could be the difference between some people having hot food or not. It will touch so many lives and is absolutely fantastic," Edmonson added, while praising the efforts of all contributors.

Newmarket racing community working together to help residents

The Covid-19 Fund is supporting a number of initiatives in Newmarket and the surrounding villages, including the delivery of essential supplies by staff from the Jockey Club and Godolphin.

Gredley's donation will also help to support the Newmarket Day Centre, which has received £5,000 to allow it to distribute hot meals to hundreds of elderly residents. The Newmarket Festival is hoping to allocate the centre £2,500 a month to continue this work.

The fund will also support young people in Newmarket and deliver food to around 180 children who qualify for free school meals. It has also funded 1,000 meals to be delivered to West Suffolk Hospital and other health and care workers in the town.

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