What new UK sporting venue "Opened" on 20 April
But you can only visit it by invitation only(they are sorting out the Infrastructure)
The General Public will be admitted at the End Of May
Where is it and B) Why might FredPuli be interested?

This must be Great Leighs, the new racecourse in Essex.

They've had one meeting. A couple of the runners at the Guineas' Meeting had run at Great Leighs.

It's a floodlit 'all weather' (fibresand or other non-turf surface) course. Floodlit? Sounds like Walthamstow Dog Track but with bigger animals The only reason for floodlighting a course is that they expect to run evening meetings outside the Summer months.

Somewhow it sounds like Catterick, Yarmouth or Windsor, not Ascot, York or Newmarket

(AND I didn't get an invitation !)

www.greatleighs.com

Is that close to Stansted Airport?
Canny People if they sited it within a short distance(Have a lot of rich foreign nationals coming in)

quote:

Originally posted by bedstor:
www.greatleighs.com

Is that close to Stansted Airport?
Canny People if they sited it within a short distance(Have a lot of rich foreign nationals coming in)

Believe me, you'd need to be a desperate foreigner, not a rich one, to go racing at Great Leighs It's a 'dog track for horses' and aimed at dog track clientele.In fact, the planners would have had competing with Romford and Walthamstow dog tracks in mind. Its racing is very much 4th division: you'd be expecting low grade handicappers and selling platers to be running [selling plater: an animal entered in selling plates,the lowest grade of racing, where the winner must be sold immediately the race finishes, though usually it is 'bought in' by the owner]. In the North you'd be thinking of somewhere like Catterick: even Haydock would be high grade in contrast.

If a foreigner flew in to Stansted for racing they'd be going to Newmarket.

But it may make money if it has enough meetings.It's to the East of London, in Essex, where the people whose ancestors were the old East End 'Cockneys' live: the 'Essex girls' and their partners.In Summer, they turn up in droves at the Newmarket July Course when Newmarket holds evening meetings with entertainment. If Great Leighs can stretch to that it should do well.That's why it's the first floodlit course in Britain: the aim is to extend evening racing beyond high Summer.

The owners claim it's 12 miles from Stansted and talk of the hotels available but that is more 'puff' than realism. Newmarket is only 40 minutes drive from Stansted (motorway and dual carriageway all the way).