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Forbury Park Raceway

Harness racing in New ZealandHorse racing venues in New ZealandSports venues in Dunedin
ForburyPark
ForburyPark

Forbury Park Raceway was a horseracing venue in the New Zealand city of Dunedin until its closure in 2021. It was located close to the Pacific Ocean coast in the suburb of Saint Kilda. The raceway was initially developed in 1870 on an area of reclaimed swamp, with a one-mile track leased to the Dunedin Jockey Club. The site was used for both galloping and saddle trotting events until 1898, at which time the Dunedin Jockey Club moved to a new venue at Wingatui, near Mosgiel. Light harness racing began at Forbury in 1909, at about which time the track was reduced to approximately 1100 yards (1000 metres). The installation of floodlights in 1960 saw the advent of night trotting. The venue is currently used for both harness racing and greyhound racing, as well as for other large-scale outdoor events. It is one of the country's main trotting venues. The Forbury Park Trotting Club marked 100 years of harness racing at Forbury Park with a race meeting on Thursday 26 November 2009, the identical date of the first meeting on the track in 1909. The club itself had been racing for 110 years at that stage as its first meeting had been at Tahuna Park in May 1892. It had held a centennial meeting in October 1992.Forbury Park was the first club in the South Island to hold a night trotting fixture with the inaugural such meeting on Thursday, 26 January 1961.An especially historic year for the club was 1965, when, with a new members' stand built for the occasion, it hosted the famed Inter Dominion series. This was the only Inter Dominion ever held in New Zealand outside of either Auckland or Christchurch. Robin Dundee and Jay Ar dead-heated for first place in the Inter Dominion Pacing Championship while Poupette won the Inter Dominion Trotting Championship. Forbury Park also hosted Long Track Motorcycle Speedway, with the New Zealand Long Track Championship held there seven times from 1982 to 1988. The first four championships were won by legendary New Zealand rider Ivan Mauger.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Forbury Park Raceway (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Forbury Park Raceway
Richardson Street, Dunedin Saint Clair

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N -45.907422222222 ° E 170.49647222222 °
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Richardson Street
9012 Dunedin, Saint Clair
Otago, New Zealand
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Forbury, New Zealand
Forbury, New Zealand

Forbury is a small residential suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) south-southwest of the city centre and lies immediately to the north of St Clair, between it and Caversham. The suburb is low lying, having originally been marshy land reclaimed in the later 19th century. As such, it is often prone to flooding. It lies at the northwest corner of a plain that stretches across South Dunedin and St Kilda known locally as "The Flat". The land rises to the northwest of the suburb to form Caversham Valley, and immediately to the west the land rises abruptly in a cliff face that is located one kilometre inland from St Clair Beach. The suburb stretches to the east of this cliff across the plain towards South Dunedin. Apart from Caversham and St Clair, Forbury is bounded by St Kilda in the south, Kew in the west, and South Dunedin in the east. The name Forbury is somewhat confusing, as it is used for several local features, not all of them within the suburb. Notable among these is the former Forbury Park Raceway, one of the city's main horse-racing venues, which actually lies in St Kilda. Forbury Corner, an important road junction, lies in Caversham, though not far from the northern boundary of Forbury. Prominent features of Forbury include Tonga Park, a sports ground used by Caversham Football Club, and the twin single-sex secondary schools, King's and Queen's. Forbury Road is the suburb's main arterial route, aligned roughly north-south and linking Caversham at Forbury Corner with St Clair at the Esplanade. The suburb's other main roads include Bay View Road, Macandrew Road, Surrey Street, and Easther Crescent. Dunedin's main LDS church sits close to the cliff face at the suburb's western edge, and one of the city's main retirement villages, the Frances Hodgkins Retirement Village is built against the cliff face immediately to the north.