Harlow Stadium History: From 1995 Opening to the Present Day

Most greyhound tracks in Britain have a history measured in decades of decline – venues that opened when the sport drew 75 million spectators a year in the 1940s and then watched their crowds dwindle meeting by meeting until the padlocks went on. Harlow’s story runs against that current. The stadium did not open during the golden age of greyhound racing. It opened in 1995, when the industry was already shrinking, and it has survived three decades of track closures, legislative pressure and commercial contraction to remain one of the most active circuits in the country. That survival is not luck. It is the result of location, infrastructure and a willingness to adapt to a sport that has changed profoundly since the gates first opened.

The 1995 Opening and Early Years

Harlow Greyhound Stadium opened on 15 March 1995 with a purpose-built 334-metre oval, a grandstand accommodating 1,500 spectators, and parking for 400 cars. The timing was unusual: the UK greyhound circuit was already consolidating from its post-war peak of 77 licensed tracks, and opening a new stadium when others were closing was a contrarian bet on the sport’s future in Essex.

The site’s location was key to the decision. Harlow sits at the intersection of the M11 and the A414, giving it road access from London, Hertfordshire, Essex and Cambridgeshire. That catchment area covered a population base large enough to sustain regular meetings, and the proximity to London – without being inside the congestion zone – made it viable for both trackside spectators and the BAGS broadcast circuit. The stadium was built to modern specifications, with infrastructure designed for television coverage from day one, even though it would be sixteen years before the cameras actually arrived.

The early years at Harlow were about establishing the track within the BAGS fixture rota and building a local audience. The 334-metre circuit offered distances of 238, 415 and 592 metres – a standard range for a small-to-medium track – and the racing programme settled into a Monday-Wednesday-Friday pattern that persists to this day. Trainers in the Essex and Hertfordshire region began using Harlow as their home track, and the local kennelling pool grew to support a full weekly calendar of graded races.

The Sky Sports Era From 2011

The pivotal moment in Harlow’s modern history came in 2011, when the stadium hosted its first televised greyhound meeting on Sky Sports. Television exposure transformed the track from a regional circuit into a nationally visible venue. The SIS broadcast network had been carrying Harlow’s BAGS meetings to bookmaker shops for years, but Sky Sports brought a different audience – armchair viewers, casual punters, and a broader betting market that pushed up turnover and raised the stakes for card quality.

The Sky debut required investment in broadcast infrastructure. Camera positions, lighting for evening meetings, graphics integration with the SIS timing system, and commentary facilities all needed upgrading to meet Sky’s production standards. That investment paid dividends beyond the broadcast: the improved infrastructure made Harlow’s BAGS feed higher quality, which benefited the everyday bookmaker stream and attracted better data coverage from form providers.

Since 2011, Harlow has appeared intermittently on the Sky Sports greyhound schedule. Not every meeting makes the television cut – Sky selects fixtures based on a combination of card quality, competitive interest and scheduling – but the possibility of broadcast keeps standards high and gives Harlow’s racing a national profile that smaller tracks without television exposure cannot match.

Notable Races and Trainers at Harlow

Harlow’s most celebrated racing moment remains Mark Wallis’s connection to the 2009 English Greyhound Derby. Wallis, who was attached to Harlow as his home track, trained Kinda Ready to victory in the Derby – the pinnacle of UK greyhound racing. That win put Harlow on the map as a track capable of producing top-class runners, not just graded midweek BAGS performers.

Wallis’s success was not accidental. The Essex-based kennelling community that uses Harlow has produced a succession of trainers with national-level strike rates, and the track’s three-day-a-week schedule provides enough racing to develop young dogs through the grades while keeping established runners competitive. The depth of the local training pool is one of Harlow’s advantages over tracks in more isolated locations: there are enough kennels within the catchment area to fill a full weekly card without relying heavily on visiting runners.

Beyond the Derby connection, Harlow has hosted open races and feature events that have attracted runners from across the country. These events are not on the scale of the major stadiums – Towcester’s Derby or Nottingham’s open-race programme – but they contribute to a competitive calendar that goes beyond routine graded racing. For a track that opened in 1995 without the heritage of the sport’s historic venues, building a competitive reputation from scratch is a genuine achievement.

How Harlow Outlasted Crayford, Perry Barr and Swindon

The question I get asked most about Harlow is not about its past but about its future: “How has it survived when so many others have closed?” In 2025 alone, three GBGB-licensed tracks shut their doors – Crayford in January, Perry Barr in August, and Swindon in December. The UK now has just 18 licensed stadiums, down from 77 at the sport’s peak. Harlow is still racing. Why?

Geography is the first answer. Harlow’s Essex location places it in the densest population corridor outside central London, with road access that makes it convenient for spectators, trainers and the SIS broadcast crew. Crayford, by contrast, sat on a site in southeast London where the land value for redevelopment dwarfed the income from greyhound racing. Perry Barr occupied a similar position in Birmingham – a city-centre site with enormous alternative value. Harlow’s location is commercially useful for greyhound racing without being so valuable that a property developer would offer multiples of the racing revenue to acquire the land.

Infrastructure is the second answer. Harlow was purpose-built in the 1990s to modern specifications. Crayford and Perry Barr were legacy venues with ageing facilities that required constant maintenance investment. The cost of keeping old stadiums operational eventually exceeded the revenue they generated, and the gap was unbridgeable. Harlow’s newer infrastructure means lower maintenance costs and better broadcast facilities – both critical for a track that depends on BAGS revenue.

Ownership stability matters too. Tracks that have changed hands repeatedly or been acquired by property companies tend to close, because the new owners see the land value rather than the racing value. Harlow has maintained continuity of purpose – it was built for greyhound racing and continues to operate as a greyhound stadium, without the constant threat of redevelopment that hung over Crayford and Perry Barr for years before their eventual closure.

The closures have also redistributed dogs and trainers in ways that benefit Harlow. Some kennels that previously ran at Crayford have shifted their entries to Harlow and Romford, deepening the field quality at both surviving tracks. In a shrinking sport, the survivors inherit the assets of the fallen, and Harlow’s position in the Essex-London corridor makes it a natural beneficiary of south-east track closures.