Kempton had a Prix Hippodrome d’Evry race at its last Saturday in May meeting, which ran from 1981 until 1992.
Evry was the newest of the suburban racecourses that ring Paris. Six years in the planning, it replaced Le Tremblay, which closed in 1967, a track that twice staged the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe during WW2. It was sacrificed with a view to turning the area into a stadium for Paris’s bid to host the Olympics. The bid lost, but the locals have a nice big park, which is more than the burghers of Evry can say.
Racing at Evry began in 1973; its plush designer grandstand with all mod cons could seat 3,500. Embarrassingly, it was closed down just 23 years later. The finances of French racing were at a low point, savings had to be made and Evry was selected for closure. It was the least popular Paris track with the public; it was 15 miles south of the city and crowds averaged only 1,000. It has something in common with Kempton, which is a similar distance from the centre of London and is much less popular with racegoers than nearby Sandown. It only really comes alive on Boxing Day.
David Loder had quickly moved up the training ranks in the early 1990s and in 1998 he was given what seemed like a plum job by Godolphin. As many as 140 of their juveniles were to be trained by him on the closed-down Evry track. Like Michael Dickinson at Manton, in theory it should have been a success but wasn’t; after three years there the association ended. The site was vacated. Numerous plans for it have come and gone since then and it remains derelict, though since 2018 it has been used as a location for film and TV thrillers.
The layout of the course is still visible using Google Maps’ Satellite View (search for Hippodrome, Bondoufle, France); the crumbling grandstand is on the southwest side.