Italy – The Italian Derby 2018

The Derby Day constitutes, in every country where galloping horse races are played, the most important sporting event of the whole season: a unique day that absolutely guarantees the most awaited moment for show, competition and choise. The Italian Derby is over 130 years old and the Ippodromo delle Capannelle in Rome has always been its perfect stage. Discover now all our trips, tours, holidays and horse trekking in Italy. The event is one of the milestones of the Capitoline spring, along with the International Tennis Championships and the Equestrian Competition in Piazza di Siena. The great champions of the world turf have written their name in the Roll of Honour of the race along with that of the greatest breeders, owners, coaches and jockeys. Until the early 1980s the ‘Nastro Azzurro’, that is the three-year-old horse race over a distance of 2,400 meters, was open only to indigenous horses. Since then it has been opened to the participation of foreign guests, thus breathing a complete internationality.

The day is the flagship of the national equestrian calendar and the interest dedicated to the event by the mass media is in line with the exceptional nature of the occasion. RAI normally ensures live links for the race (also offered by thematic satellite circuits around the world). Other television networks confirm a great space for the day that reinforces the contours of the great sporting show with reasons of interest linked to customs, tradition, fashion and culture. The spectators are normally over ten thousand. The first Derby took place on April 21 1884 and was won by Andreina. Since 1926, the year in which the new racecourse was inaugurated, horses run on the same route, with only a two-year break during the Second World War. At first it was called the Derby Reale, then in the 1930s it was called the Gran Premio del Re and, for a short time, also the Gran Premio del Re Imperatore. From 1946 to today it is called with the name of Derby Italiano (Italian Derby).