We both know which it is going to be, the Headmaster.

Kempton died when they put in the AW track. I grew up in Sunbury and went racing there from when I was a teenager in the late 70's. Saw some really great horses run on the flat there. Happy memories  with my family an friends. Thank God my Mum isn't alive to see this happen. She would have been close to tears.

I can't agree with the rest, naturally, but I'm tempted by your first sentence smartie.  Never really been the same place but which AWT has?  When will we stop making the same mistake???  At least Chelmsford was a new build and had nothing to wreck in the conversion.

Yes, the thing ties in with the fact the shops no longer really want pictures. A friend of mine has a horse in training and a couple of times its been due to run at Kempton. Because the meetings this time of year are twilight ones (i.e. start at about 4) neither him or I can get there easily to see the horse run! Must be no more than a handful of customers there on course and so anyone looking at a balance sheet for the business would clearly see that the business is dying! Because they (Kempton) went the AW route, then the Twilight route, they now find themselves with a business that the shops don't want and the paying customers through the turnstiles cant get to! Off course bookmakers have made this happen. Sad. If you knew my Mum, you'd know what I mean! Sorry, bit too sentimental.

Exactly. Now the shops don't want them!

My honest opinion is the time where the fixture list is funded by the bookmakers (at whose behest it has been expanded) are going to come to an end. Probably within the next five years and certainly within the next ten. They have created a situation where they can make huge amounts of money at zero risk without having to fund Horse Racing. Some racecourses won't survive without this income stream I am sure of that. A Goveremnet led cull of the FOBTs is their last hope. It is not going to happen.

Aye,that was a low point.

headmaster

on an earlier post you say you noticed both on here and on twitter people seem only interested in the king george,on another thread i made a case for national hunt racing at kempton in particular how strong the 2nd day of the christmas meeting and the late february meeting with 3 x grade 2s and an historically strong staying handicap chase.now first and foremost i want kempton to stay and believe without huge confidence it will,however last night before reading your post i was thinking well if the worst comes to the worst then to ease the pain for the racing lovers then surely we can have a leopardstown type fixture over 3 days and yes at ascot,i had not gone as far in my mind as to running the challow hurdle there but yes that could be part of it and keep its grade 1 status {big mac and fitz believe the challow and the tolworth should be down graded } there is a long way to run with all this at the moment and i believe the 2022 king george will be run at kempton {weather permitting}but if not then a huge push is needed to get a 3 day fixture at ascot.

Considering what the traffic was like at Kempton back in the days before the AW track, when people still used to go there, I'm not sure that adding a further 3,000 households, with 6,000 cars, will necessarily get the go-ahead.

If the council actually for once insisted that the developers built and funded some new surgeries, schools and a hospital for the 7,000-8,000 new residents this would attract, then it definitely wouldn't go ahead.

With the Jockey Club having admitted by this announcement that the money they wasted on the AW track has been a colossal blunder, then we can just leave that bit of the racecourse to rot, and restore the Easter Stakes, the Masaka Stakes, the Roseberry H'cap, the Queen's Prize, the Jubilee H'cap, the Sirenia Stakes and the September Stakes to their proper place in the Calendar - on the turf.

Good enough , there was nothing wrong with Kempton until the 2nd of May 2005 when they started work on the all weather track and started their own end

Your right there Blackrock about the young not being interested unless there is a happy hour with half price lager available , its very sad to see what has happened with dog tracks and now horseracing tracks being bulldozed for houses and mega Supermarkets to replace them

If the poor can't afford leisure time, all their plans will come to nought! (This is a major depression) and a Tote monopoly is needed to protect some jobs in racing, jobs will inevitably have to go, and racecourses in large numbers closed. This is the truth.

The future of racing is political outside of racing, until we break the Banks grip of Government, all negative results will follow!

Lots of good points on here. I do like Kempton jumps and usually go a couple of times a year but the AW is sparsely attended and even the shops don't seem to want it that much.

      If we are going to lose Kempton (and the sums involved are fairly large), the money used should be invested into a tote/exchange/bookmaker business model with profits going back into racing, as a long term income stream to replace what will be left of the Levy in ten years time. Some long term strategic thinking is required or I fear we will go down the route of Greyhound racing. I remember Hackney closing and don't want Kempton to be the horse racing equivalent of that harbinger of doom.

simon bazalgette "jockey club chief executive"

talking absolute fkin nonsense now on ATR

NO chance of this happening by 2021 going by that interview and the slow way things happen (ie) planning permission, appeals etc.

Having given this much thought overnight, for some reason, I keep coming back to the same conclusion. 
Regardless of what stance or point of view each person has on the news, worryingly I can't seem to get a far more insidious undercurrent to all of this out of my mind.  In my view, Jockey Club Estates are merely the "falls guys" in thjis saga.  The real origins of all of this has most likely emanated from dark portals of Whitehall.  Sir Humphrey would be puffing his chest out as he takes in the shock horror response to the news and no doubt arching an eyebrow at yet another "masterstroke."  My feeling is all of this has most likekely being hatched in the smoky rooms of Whites, Boodles, Brooks's, Turf Club, Carlton....etc.  Is it little wonder the eventual sale of Kempton will dovetail neatly with the Government's policy on expansion of Heathrow, as well as its recently announced policy of creating new "garden towns"??? The fact of the matter is, London, the South East of England and large swathes of Southern England are sitting on a toxic property "time bomb" which no administration knows what to do about or has been willing to address for the best part of the last 20 years.  The property price juggernaught has become an uncontrollable beast which is wreaking havoc on communities and families.  You know you have a serious problem when an individual who earns a salary of say 125k per annum can't or is having to struggle to get on the property ladder, as is the case in London. 

I suspect Whitehall was given a breif to "source" suitable sites and strong-arm them into accepting an offer they cannot refuse.  In light of this, racecourses would make a perfectly sensible target (after all they are not in use all of the time) Now if you are Jockey Club Estates and Whitehall comes along under the guise of some random borough council and makes you an offer most economists would consider foolhardy to turn down, what do you do?  You put your tin helmet on and take the flak and opprobium of the racing community for a few days, months...etc and bank the cash!

That I supsect is the reality of where we are.

The property price juggernaught has become an uncontrollable beast which is wreaking havoc on communities and families.  You know you have a serious problem when an individual who earns a salary of say 125k per annum can't or is having to struggle to get on the property ladder, as is the case in London

and there is jack sh1t that anybody can do about it

Whilst everyone is up in arms about the proposed closure of Kempton isn't it an irony that hardly a whimper has ever been heard about the disastrous desecration bestowed on Newbury!  My last visit to Newbury was on Lockinge day 2016 and the look of the place, is quite simply soul destroying.
It is now a housing estate with a racecourse attached to it. I for one will never be going back (unless I have to.) Newbury reminded of someone who had gone under the surgeon's knife and come out with disastrous consequences.
Newbury ofcourse got themselves into the mess they found themselves which resulted in having to sell off their land and those who know the story, know why.

around hennessy time I watched back some of the old hennessys on youtube and I had forgotten how much atmosphere there used to be at the place with people standing by the rail on the inside of the course from around 2 out to the winning line

now there's hardly anybody there, just advertising boards, and it is isn't half the place it was

and now the sponsor has pulled out that's another bit of heritage up in smoke