The Cape Turf Club

THE CAPE TURF CLUB

For 72 years the Cape Turf Club has been close­ly linked with the growth of Milnerton - a town which it has endowed with a great tradition of horse racing, horses and horsemen.

The building of a racecourse at Milnerton, then a waste of bush, was the idea of the Langerman brothers. Negotiations began in 1904, but it was not till May 29, 1908, that the first meeting was held, packed trains bringing more than 2000 peo­ple to the course.

Since then the Cape Turf Club (it changed from the Milnerton Turf Club in 1968 when incorporating the Durbanville Turf Club) has provided a first-class course and every innovation that can improve racing.

The greatest achievement perhaps was the establishment of the Cape Guineas in 1957. Now sponsored as the R 75000 Richelieu Guineas, the race has come to be regarded as South Africa's premier classic.

he club has had only six chairmen, Major G. B. van Zyl, followed by Mr Justice R. B. Howes in 1918, Ralph Price 1936, Sidney Benjamin 1947, Jack Stubbs 1954, and Alderman Abe Bloomberg 1959 under whose chairmanship the club has made its greatest changes.

At the end of the year the first phase of the club's R4-m rebuilding programme will be com­pleted and a computerised sell-pay tote system is then to be installed - providing race-goers at Milnerton with the most modern facilities in the country.

Milnerton...GONE
Newmarket...GONE
Bloemies....GONE
Soon to be Clariwood....GONE

Imagine if proactive business men ran Phumelela/GC?!?!?!?!?

Funny indeed!

With the population of SA they should be building more racecourses,did anyone watch the racing from the UK yesterday? big Bank Holiday monday crowds at every course..

I did highlight this under Mollys post last week, the ratio is scary :S

I'm very unhappy to see the demise of racecourses, but the inevitability of some shrinkage was always there.

The inevitability of MORE shrinkage is what should be on our minds right now.

There is a new horse sale on the cards in January in Cape Town and the thinking behind the sale transcends 'local' racing and is potentially a breath of fresh air for breeders who have lifted their product into a market that cannot carry it. It is even true to say that the sale is dragging some/most of the industry kicking and screaming against change (as we always do). I hope for the originators of the plan that they do succeed, not just because they can make some money, but because growth and winning new markets is better than stagnating or shrinking, it means survival.

It is time (it really, really, is time) that racing in general adopts the same freshness of approach to minimize the ever shrinking footprint that glorious horseracing has in every country. Casinos (& online gambling & sports gambling) continue to open everywhere, the only thing that slows them down (everywhere) is legislation, regulation and religion.