South Australian Jockey Club

South Australian Jockey Club is the principal race club in South Australia. First racing events The first horse racing events in South Australia took place at a well-attended picnic meeting held over 1 and 2 January 1838. In August 1838, riding his grey gelding Charley, Fred Handcock won the first steeplechase event ever held in South Australia. Various racing events (including match races) continued throughout the 1840s, but without a regulating body. Early foundations of the S.A.J.C. The first incarnation of the South Australian Jockey Club (S.A.J.C.) was in 1850, when it ran a race programme at Brighton on 14 February. Thomas Shayle was the Hon. Sec. and Edward Strike the Clerk of the Course. Many variously named clubs were subsequently formed and folded, and races were run under Jockey Club rules within and outside these organisations at various locations: Dry Creek, the East Parklands (the "Old Adelaide Racecourse") and Glenelg. Following several successful race meetings organised by E. M. Bagot and Gabriel Bennett on their grazing property south of Henley Beach Road, Thebarton (where Mile End is today), the first being 6–8 January 1859, and a series of preliminary discussions held in June and July 1861, a new committee was formed, whose members included Sir James Fisher (president), E. M. Bagot, Gabriel Bennett, W. K. Simms, P. B. Coglin (starter) and William Blackler, with James Chambers as judge. They settled on the Thebarton track as their racecourse, with the first Club programme held 1–3 January 1862. The Thebarton course, dubbed the "Butchers' Course", grew increasingly unpopular with both the racing fraternity and the racegoing public. It was difficult of access compared with the "Old Course" on the East Parklands; moreover it could be unpleasant (depending on wind direction) on account of smells emanating from nearby animal processing industries on the banks of the Torrens. It was, however, supplied gratis by Bagot and Bennett, whereas P. B. Coglin, who had the lease for the "Old Course", demanded £1,500 for its use. A notable race held in this period was the 1865 Grand Steeplechase won by the horseman-poet Adam Lindsay Gordon on Cadger.