Earliest Meeting: 1895
Final Meeting: Saturday 21st February 2009
The South Australia district of Cheltenham is a suburb of the city of Adelaide to the north-west, and had its own racecourse at Cheltenham Park from the last years of the 19th century, through to the early years of the 21st Century. For the 5 years prior to Cheltenham Park Racecourse opening, Port Adelaide Racing Club held their meetings at a racecourse on Grand Junction Road. The racecourse, with track circumference of 2052 metres and straight of 325 metres, was located about 5 kilometres from Port Adelaide. The course is reputed to have started racing in 1895 under the administration of the Port Adelaide Racing Club who leased the land from the City Council. Then in 1921 the Racing Club purchased the site for £25,000, some 3 years after it had been used by the military for army training during the First World War. The racecourse was used for similar purposes during the Second World War, while in 1975 administration of the race meetings passed from the Port Adelaide Racing Club to the South Australia Jockey Club. The principal race at this time was the S J Pullman Stakes which was won by Tulloch in 1961.
The photos above, although in the public domain, are shown courtesy of the State Library of South Australia.
The writing was on the wall for Cheltenham Park racecourse in November 2007 when the South Australia Jockey Club sold the site for $85, with the idea of building a new housing estate. Those plans were confirmed in the early part of 2009, and the final meeting took place on Saturday 21st February 2009.
Much of the information about this course has been found using internet research and is in the public domain. However, useful research sources have been:-
London Illustrated News
Racing Illustrated 1895-1899
The Sporting & Dramatic Illustrated
Northern Turf History Volumes 1-4 by J.Fairfax-Blakeborough
The Sporting Magazine
A Long Time Gone by Chris Pitt first published in 1996 ISBN 0 900599 89 8
Racing Calendars which were first published in 1727
