Richly rewarded loser of a classic race (8)
I believe the answer is:
atalanta
'classic race' is the definition.
The definition suggests a singular noun which matches the answer.
'richly rewarded loser of a' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'a' could be 'an' and 'an' is found in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for atalanta that I've seen before include "Fabulous runner" , "Greek huntress defeated in a running race" , "Greek runner" , "classically fast runner" , "Swinburne wrote - in Calydon" .)