After the foulest of opening days, a merciless washout that depressed spirits and profits, Newmarket yesterday felt not just a different place but a different country. When the sun shines here on Ladies' Day, it is easy to believe that God is in his Heaven and all is well with the world.

This is a peculiar town, its inhabitants beholden to horses and its instincts unwelcoming to strangers. The Rowley Mile, sterile and businesslike, embodies such insularity. On the July Course, by contrast, Newmarket sheds its suspicions and discovers its gregarious side.

But summer racecourses, by definition, are hostages to climactic fortune and to be here on Wednesday was a penance. The crowd was a meagre 6,705, the lowest for any day of this meeting in recent memory. The thousands who opted out had no cause for regret.

Up on the Jockey Club Stand, one of the charming anachronisms of the place, overhead drainpipes gave up the unequal struggle against relentless rain. Water gushed down on the great and good of racing in apt summary of a miserable occasion.

Stephen Wallis, administering his first July meeting as managing director, felt so chilled and wet that he went home and turned his central heating on. In mid July. But Wallis, having honed his entrepreneurial talents on the Epsom Derby, is nothing if not an optimist. “It could have been worse,” he said yesterday morning. “It could have been today.”

A similar message was being given by Michael Prosser. As director of racing and clerk of the course, Prosser called his staff of 20 together at 6am. “We'd seen everything we'd put in place destroyed by the weather, and it was miserable,” he said. “But I said to my boys we had to get rid of anything that reminded us of yesterday.”

Aside from the regular clear-up operation in mid-meeting, muddy pathways needed steamcleaning, embedded litter needed removing. Yet by the time the gates opened at 11am yesterday, the July Course was pristine in the sunshine.

The Ladies' Day phenomenon shows no sign of fatigue and the magic words lead inexorably to a doubling of attendance. Aintree remains the most staggering example of the genre, Doncaster perhaps the bawdiest. But here the effect is equally extraordinary.

In 2006, Newmarket staged Ladies' Day on the opening day for the last time. It drew a crowd of 14,512 - 6,000 more than turned up the next day. Last year, they switched it to day two and the attendance discrepancy switched with it. The gap this year was still greater. All 8,000 places in the Premier enclosure yesterday were sold out in advance and the final crowd beat last year's modern record of 15,100.

It has nothing to do with the quality of racing, everything to do with racing's capacity to fulfil the female desire to dress up. At some courses, it works despite the surroundings but, here, it works in tandem with them. And yesterday, with the eyeline transformed from umbrellas and scowls to a sea of glamorous hats, Newmarket can seldom have looked more chic.

In a town with more than its share of the detritus of modern life, the July Course has the old-world character of a timewarp. The thatched saddling boxes might have been transported from a Devon fishing village and the weighing-room from a rustic cricket ground.

Rear of house, though, a tasteful makeover last year has created space and style. Stravinskys, where 14 wines are sold by the glass and food tables are turned over slickly, is a template for modern racecourse catering. The Pink Bar, added this year with seafood and fizz, would be an enhancement to any venue.

Even racing purists have stopped sneering and sniping at their territory being corralled by people whose first priority is not a study of sectional times or draw bias. The influx may still bewilder them but, on days like yesterday, it is impossible not to appreciate the impact.