Category: Racecourses

Chelmsford City Racecourse is a racing venue found in Great Leighs near Chelmsford, Essex, England. It was formerly called Great Leighs Racecourse. The racecourse is owned by John Holmes and son, Jonathan and was officially opened on 20/04/2008.

History

Chelmsford held its first race meeting with an audience on 28/05/2008 and the opening race was won by Temple of Thebes. It is a flat Polytrack type of course. The racecourse became famous for its racing facilities but was also criticised for its incomplete visitors’ facilities and thus did not meet expectations at many levels. The venue can host races during winter as well as summer.

Closure

Racing was halted temporarily on 16/01/2009 and the site put on a bid. It was announced in March that the two bidding parties had been unable to prove that they had sufficient finances to manage it.

Leasing and selling

The Administrators made an 18-month lease deal with Terry Chambers who is a local businessman, but the course was ineligible to bid for fixtures since it was unable to acquire a racing licence in time. The racecourse was expected to resume racing in 2011 after the administrators struck a deal with Chambers and Bill Gredley, where the pair would buy the racetrack. However, the plans did not succeed as the deal did not pull through. MC Racetracks bought the course in November 2011, but the British Horseracing Authority turned down an application to hold fixtures in 2013. BHA however allowed Chelmsford to be among the fixture venues of 2014.Still, when the owners submitted requests for it to host fixtures in 2014, the BHA rejected it. Later in 2013, the racecourse was bought by Betfred’s owner Fred Done and sought the approval of BHA for 2015 fixtures.

Reopening

With an invited crowd of 800 people, the racetrack reopened on 11/01/2015. A public reopening later took place on 22/01/2015, with the first race going to Tryster by a short head.

The course is located just off Catterick town in North Yorkshire County, North East England. It is a dual-race type course, often referred to as Catterick Bridge. It is owned by the Catterick Racecourse Limited.

History

The course has been existent since the mid-17thCentury, although official records only reveal racing stats starting 1783. It was not until 1813 that the current permanent course was built. Many refurbishment changes have been done to the course in the time of its existence, but there has always been a deliberate effort to maintain its original touch. As such, the present Grandstand still possesses some elements of the stand that occupied its place in 1906.

The course

Catterick is a left handed oval course, gently undulating over a length of slightly over a mile. It is modelled for both flat and jumping competitions. The jump races take the start and end of every year- when conditions are wintry- while flat racing occurs in the warmer months between April and October.

It has a gravel sub-soil under the grass, a factor that makes it a relatively stable surface.

Thee course does not have a formal dress code requirement.

Races

January’s Grand National is the headline event every year at Catterick, attracting most racegoers of all 25 fixtures that are run here annually.

The first batch of jump races starts with the New Years day race on January 1, and ends with the Hunt Staff Benefit Society Countryside Day in mid-March. Jumping returns again in November during the Start of The Jumps, and closes the year with the Go Racing in Yorkshire Winter Festival at the end of December. The flat races in between start with the Easter Race Day and end with The Halloween Race Day.

Catterick boasts being the debut track for eventual international flat-track champion horse Colier Hill, who ran his first competitive race at the ground in 2002.

Cartmel Racecourse is a jumps-race track located in the countryside village by the same name in Cumbria County, England. It is considered a small course, but races are still televised on Racing UK. It is owned by Lord Cavendis, who acquired it in 1998.

History

The track has been galloped by racehorses since 1856 according to records, but stories of horse racing stretch further back. Landowners from the vllage were the main source of funding for the small course, which did not adopt professional racing until after the second World War.

The track was caught up in an attempted fraud scandal in 1974, when trainer Antony Collins produced a weak version of the horse ‘Gay Future’in order to get beter odds from bookmakers. The scandal was later adopted into the movie ‘Murphy’s Stroke’in 1979.

The course

The course’s shape is a unique oval, with gentle bends on one side that make it appear more like a soft-edge rectangle. The other end of the oval skews to one side, such that one bend is sharp and the other is absolutely smooth- no need for slowing down as a horse navigates.

The finishing straight then cuts across the oval, joining its two long arms.

Cartmel enjoys a rich race going culture, with around 20,000 spectators arriving on some race days. This puts it third in the list of attendance at jump courses in Britain, only behind Cheltenham and Aintree, home of the Grand National. It maintains a culture of letting people have fun besides horse racing, sometimes with a break between three days of racing for people to visit the country. The allowing of cars to drive right into the middle of the course and choose spots from which to catch races is a popular move, as is the permission to set up bbqs.

 

Races

There are seven race days in the Cartmel calendar, with the Bank Holidays of August proving to be by far the most popular. The most memorable horse on the track is Soul magic, who has won here seven times before 2014.