Great Expectations

April 2008 will bring with it a new dawn in British horse racing. For the first time in 80 years, race goers in England will welcome the opening of a newly built racecourse, Great Leighs.

Situated in Essex, Great Leighs has been built to exploit a geographical anomaly in the British horse racing landscape. At present, there is slightly more than one racecourse per million people in England. However, the Essex region and the adjoining regions of East London and Hertfordshire boast a collective population of 4.1 million people. Despite such demographics, the area has thus far lacked a racecourse, but this anomaly is soon to be corrected.

With such a large catchment area and a state-of-the-art grandstand that has capacity for 10,000 race goers, Great Leighs looks certain to be a welcome addition to the racing infrastructure. Coupled with the advantageous demographics is the fact that the UK's leading training centre, Newmarket, is just 50 miles up the motorway. With such state-of-the-art facilities within easy access, Great Leighs should see quality runners from the get-go, as trainers will be looking to find opportunities for their cares.



It has been 81 years since the last racecourse opened in Britain, and the scenes this time around will be remarkably different from those witnessed at Taunton in 1927. Great Leighs is an all-weather track, where the horses will race on a polytrack surface rather than conventional grass. This will ensure that racing will be able to take place year-round without consideration of the prevailing weather conditions.

Furthermore, Great Leighs will boast powerful floodlights that will afford them the luxury of hosting nighttime race meetings even in the depths of winter. Of course, year-round racing in all-weather conditions is not solely for the benefit of the trainers; it is now a core requirement for the commercial viability of the racecourse.

More than ever, the requirement for racecourses to be commercially viable is at the top of the list in the pre-development considerations. Great Leighs will look to tap into the ever-growing corporate entertainment and party nights business, which has been so successful at other racecourses.

Thus, it follows that Great Leighs will exploit every opportunity in its bid to profit. A full entertainment package is in store. Vibrant bars and panoramic restaurants will remain open long after the horses have left the stable yard to make the journey home. Britain's first sports-betting hall will open its doors on non-racing days to facilitate those looking to fulfill their requirement for football, cricket, Formula One, and other sporting events. It won't stop there; concerts will be planned, and before long you can expect extravagant stages and crowds rocking to the sound of music.

In another stretch from the traditional, Great Leighs will also prove to be the springboard for many a fledgling trainer's career as it looks west to repeat the model of U.S. racecourse barn training centres. This is a double-edged sword. The trainers will have excellent facilities at more affordable prices to train their horses. The horses, in turn, will make up the numbers for the scheduled racing, so it's a win-win situation for all concerned.

So, where then does Great Leighs fit into the racing landscape? It has officially been recognized as the 60th UK racecourse, and adds its name to a list of some of the most historic and picturesque racecourses in the world. Its addition to this list sees it enter the annals as the most recent and significant notch in a long racing history.

It is thought that the first horse race in England took place in around 200 A.D. However, the first recorded race meeting was at Smithfield in London during a horse fair in 1174, and was thought to have been organized by Henry II. Racing then met with a setback in 1654 when Oliver Cromwell placed a ban on the sport, as he requisitioned horses for use by the state.

Royalty was again to the fore in one of the next major developments in UK racing, and it was a development of which the beneficial consequences remain in today's racing calendar. In 1711, Queen Anne hosted the very first Royal Ascot meeting, and it remains the centerpiece of the racing and social calendar for many, as it hosts some of the best races and parties of the year.

The Jockey Club was then formed in 1752 in order to create and enforce the rules of racing. This in itself was ironic in the grand scheme of UK horse racing, as 12 years previously, the Parliament introduced an act "to restrain and to prevent the excessive increase in horse racing." Thankfully, for the good of the development of horse racing in the UK, the individuals who sat together to form the Jockey Club chose to ignore this act of Parliament.

The Jockey Club regulated racing in the UK until very recently, and through a number of changes, it is now controlled by the British Horseracing Authority, which encompasses the regulation of the sport, as well as the management of 13 racecourses and the training grounds at Newmarket and Lambourn.

Whilst Great Leighs does represent the newest British racecourse, it serves to replace but one of the many courses that have closed since the opening of Taunton in 1927. Hurst Park, which once hosted the Triumph Hurdle, and Lincoln, the original home of the handicap of the same name, are but two of the racecourses that have lapsed in that time, as the temptation to close and develop racecourses for housing is stronger than the will to continue with racing in the venue.

Whatever about the past, the future looks certain, and Great Leighs joins 59 other tracks on the racing landscape. Along with Lingfield, Southwell, Wolverhampton, and Kempton, Great Leighs is the latest all-weather track and is added to the list of 18 flat courses, 25 national hunt courses, and a smattering of mixed courses that host both jump and flat racing.