Leighs Set For Historic Opening

Great Leighs, Britain´s first new racecourse since Taunton began operating in 1927, will finally stage its first official meeting tomorrow.

The Essex track was given a belated thumbs-up by an inspectorate of the British Horseracing Authority following a do-or-die check at 9am on Friday morning.

Sunday´s fixture is not open to the general public, with fine-tuning still required for some of the amenities, but a number of high-profile yards will be represented.

Ed Dunlop was complimentary in his assessment of the course after he attended a recent trialling day and will run Temple Of Thebes and Clearing House at the weekend.

"Obviously the staff there must have done an amazing amount of work between when I was there and now and I applaud them," said the Newmarket trainer.

"I don´t imagine it´ll be a beautiful experience watching it first time, but the track itself and the camber is fantastic.

"It´ll be typical Polytrack and I expect it to bed down in time but it´ll be an exciting start for them - it´s been a long time coming.

"It can take us two hours or more to travel when we take horses to gallop at Lingfield and sometimes longer on the way back.

"It´s more like 45 minutes for us Newmarket trainers to take horses to gallop (at Great Leighs), so it´s an ideal distance for us to be able to go now."

Temple Of Thebes showed a decent level of form as a juvenile and Dunlop is hopeful she can make a little history by shedding her maiden tag in the Stan James At Great Leighs Maiden Fillies´ Stakes, which will be the first race run at the course.

"We had her in at Wolverhampton but she had a minor bruise to the heel, which has now healed up," he continued.

"She´s shown some decent form, but she goes left in her races.

"We´ve hopefully ironed that problem out but we obviously wanted to run her at a left-handed track, hence looking at Wolverhampton and Great Leighs."

John Holmes, owner of Great Leighs, admits it is not ideal that the first few meetings will not be open to members of the public, who will have to wait until May 28 to attend.

However, after so many unforeseen hold-ups, he is very much looking forward to the day.

"We´re very excited, but at the same time we realise we´ve got a job to do before racing over the next 24 hours," said Holmes.

"It has been a long time coming, but we have a nice card on Sunday and it´s unfortunate that we´re not going to be open to the public.

"We have two very nice fixtures on the 28th and 29th of May and we´re looking forward to that.

"We´re having four bookmakers turn up on Sunday and generally speaking we´ll be looking at around 10 - the betting ring is adjacent to the grandstand."

(C) PA Sport