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I visited Kempton Park for the first time in six or seven years this week and was shell shocked at what I saw. What faced me was a sad, sorry looking place which is now living on its former glories. Gone has the Jubilee and sprint courses and the national hunt course is now ruined with the sand pit crossing it where once stood the water jump. The meeting I attended was free entry and even with this incentive only a scattering of people attended, as a regular said to me normally you can count the punters on one hand for their AW meetings. I fear for this once great course, does anyone else have any feelings on what has happened to Kempton Park and what its future might be??
Kempton used to be one of my favourite courses and I went there frequently, then they decided to introduce the all weather and its never been the same since. Apart from the rearranged King George meeting in January I hadn’t been there for two years and don’t miss the place at all.
It’ll be first against the wall if they decide to shut a few courses down.
All the AW floodlit stuff to Wolverhampton, the big jumps races to Sandown & all the daytime AW stuff to Lingfield.
I went to Kempton last year for the Racing Post Chase and i have to say it is a really nice course to visit.
Jumps are good as they have been moved towards the stands unlike my local Haydock where you need a telescope to locate nowadays.
It did sadden me though to see the rails still being inplace for the Jubilee course as this could still be used in the summer for some turf flat meetings using the hurdles course to finish on.
Id love to live their as during the week you could get home from work then go racing straight away.
A really nice course and has some top class facilities.
I remember the good old days at Kempton, with the Queens Prize & the Easter and Masaka stakes highlighting their big Easter meeting. As well as that there were the Rosebery Handicap & Jubilee handicap. As for the jumps the Charisma Gold Cup meeting signalled the start of the new jumps season.
Its an awful shame that all the above fixtures are now an extremely pale shadow of their former selves.
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