Kempton Park under threat

Clever cartoon by Darren Bird

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You've already got district councillors coming out saying they have no intention of working alongside the JC and Redrow. This'll run for a long time before anything actually worthwhile comes out.
 
Lard said:
It's like when generations sell stately homes to cash in. You can see why they do it.
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Must admit, the words 'Kempton' and 'stately home' was a combination I never expected to see.

I think some of this possibly has its roots in the commercial success of Premiership football, in so far as we're seeing a whole generation of sports adminsitrators seemingly operating in the belief that they too can bring untold riches to their sport if they could just release a few lucrative deals and then back themselves to reinvest this in some slightly nebulous thing called "development". Most usually of course we see it with selling terrestrial television rights to satelitte broadcasters, but racing has alreayd proved they can't turn that particular oil tanker round. They seem to have gone to the next stage now of selling off courses. It's perhaps worth noting that both Cheltenham, and more recently of course Newbury, have both seen off such interest in the past. I wouldn't be so confident that Kempton will
 
A real shock that the course that hosts one of national hunts most prestiges chases might and probably will be closed and the King George to be moved to Sandown.

The last time I went to Sandown in 1999 I got the shock of my life. I always loved watching racing there on TV but seeing the place in the flesh was a shock to the system

The place was a dump and I could only describe it as huge and ugly and in my opinion a disgrace to NH racing. The course itself is fantastic but the facilities were shocking

The good news for them and the racing public is they are going to give the place a facelift. The bad news is it's the wrong place to be running a King George

I know Kempton is not an easy 3 miles but it's not as stiff as Sandown which takes some getting when there is cut in the ground.

The Pendil's and the Wayward Lad's will be replaced by the real staying types and it could become more like a second Gold Cup than a King George.

I assume that Sandown and Kempton are under the same umbrella and they have some sort of rights to host the King George?

If it were up to me it would be run at Aintree which would suit the speedy 3 milers much better than Sandown.
 
The leader of Spelthorne BC has come out strongly against the plans for development . It is green belt land and they will have one hell of a struggle to get these plans through . Is it too cynical of me to believe that they have put this in in the tradition of threatening to cut a leg off so that when you lose an arm it is a relief - namely they want to build on the parts of the park no longer in use for racing like the Jubilee course and this will be presented as a splendid compromise saving KP .

It seems that they may also have been unprepared for the backlash especially from the NH fraternity . Nicky Henderson already reminding JC that
RHT was set up by his father to save racecourses not to sell them off . Its whole purpose was to save racecourses after the closure of Hurst Park just over the river from Kempton.
 
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The proposals will have virtually no chance of success unless the District Council buy into it and incorporate it within their Local Plan. An application without that allocation would be foolhardy.

Selling off an asset to supposedly sustain the remaining assets under their ownership is not a material planning consideration.
 
Moreover, Kempton has been laid out as a park since the 12th century , one of the reservoirs is an SSSI - lots of hurdles ! Ahead .
 
I agree with all the negative comments about the decision but if the worst was to happen why let them open an all weather track at Newmarket? Nearly everyone agrees there is too much racing, it would be a perfect opportunity to prune the fixture list with no track losing out apart from Kempton. I would expect Rust & Co to cave in though like they did regards Newcastle.
 
Dante said:
I agree with all the negative comments about the decision but if the worst was to happen why let them open an all weather track at Newmarket? Nearly everyone agrees there is too much racing, it would be a perfect opportunity to prune the fixture list with no track losing out apart from Kempton. I would expect Rust & Co to cave in though like they did regards Newcastle.
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What will be pruned is NH racing fixtures...with more and more horrible shitty camel racing in its place. Anything to get the turnaround in races, in between everyone slamming £100 a spin into a roulette machine! Its just a matter of how long NH can survive now.
 
Grasshopper said:
You're as big a drama queen as Nicky Henderson is, you flamer.
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Musselburgh is the only track in the North thats doing well. The rest are dying on their arse. Tracks can't survive on a couple of hundred people turning up to watch 6 Class 5 races. The ruling body simply don't care about NH racing.
 
Digger said:
Musselburgh is the only track in the North thats doing well. The rest are dying on their arse. Tracks can't survive on a couple of hundred people turning up to watch 6 Class 5 races. The ruling body simply don't care about NH racing.
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I'm struggling to see what this has to do with Kempton closing?

I'd rather the status quo was kept, but if they do go ahead with this, an AW track at Newmarket to replace Kempton, will not sound the death-toll for Jumps racing. Anyone who thinks it does, is being unneccessarily pessimistic.
 
To be fair, there does seem to be a bit of a backlash kicking-up, with Oliver Sherwood now suggesting racing needs to rally-round to save Kempton.

Couple that, with local opposition to the plans, and the fact that JC Racecourses execs would probably prefer a quiet/easy life, this might end-up going nowhere.
 
Grasshopper said:
I'm struggling to see what this has to do with Kempton closing?

I'd rather the status quo was kept, but if they do go ahead with this, an AW track at Newmarket to replace Kempton, will not sound the death-toll for Jumps racing. Anyone who thinks it does, is being unneccessarily pessimistic.
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It might not sound the death knell but it's indicative of a trend...a dual-purpose course is (probably) to close and the response is to build a new AW track (within an hour's drive of an existing one) rather than a replacement dual purpose one. Just farm the NH fixtures out to anywhere, change the shape of the second most prestigious jumps race in the calendar significantly by moving it to a much stiffer uphill course, while ignoring the fact that Kempton's place in horse racing's pantheon is solely down to its NH heritage.
 
I'm not so sure it is indicative of a trend, tbh........or at least, I can't agree with the suggestion that it is indicative of a move to dilute or otherwise compromise Jumps racing.

What I do think it's indicative of, is a company seeking to exploit its assets to their fullest. I think this a purely business-driven decision, and almost certainly motivated by balance-sheet considerations. It even smacks of a there being an overall strategy - a rare beast indeed, in the racing industry.

Well over 50% of the JCR courses are either exclusively Jumps, or dual purpose. Hard to believe, therefore, that there is some anti-Jumps agenda at play.

None of this means that it is welcome, of course.
 
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Can you imagine a similar proposal ever being made concerning Epsom, even though it would make more sense in lots of ways? It only stages one significant meeting per year and the course is a complete anachronism.
 
I make it there are thirteen fixtures to hold elsewhere and probably only three "classy" enough for Sandown. Carlisle has held the Lanzarote previously and Huntingdon the Charisma meeting so they could go there.
 
If the closure of Kempton does go ahead, it will be very regrettable and it will reflect very badly on JCR.

As for an all weather track at Newmarket, could they think of a worse way to spend money?
 
70 meetings in 2016. 10 attendances over 3000, of which only 3 days had over 5000. 21164 on 26/12, 11219 on 27/12 and 6614 on 2/5. Makes the average attendance about 2200 which is rather less than Stockport County in Conference North.

Cruddy little skid pan.
 
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