RACING AT KEMPTON SAFEGUARDED

KEMPTON PARK is safe – after the Jockey Club shelved its plans to turn the home of the Ladbrokes King George VI Chase into a housing estate.

Proposals, unveiled in January 2017, to build 3,000 homes on the site met with stern opposition, including from Nicky Henderson, who pledged to “lie in front of the bulldozers”.

But yesterday the Jockey Club’s senior steward Sandy Dudgeon revealed a change of strategy, whereby “a proportion of the available land” would be developed “and allow jump and all-weather racing to continue”.

Henderson, right, a threetime winner of the King George with Long Run in 2010 and 2012, and Might Bite in 2017, said yesterday: “I’m delighted to hear the news.

“Obviously, it’s very good news from everybody’s point of view and also they are going to have a development that will help the finances of Jockey Club Racecourses.

“I appreciate what they were doing and I’m glad that there is benefit for both sides.” Racing has been staged at the Sunbury track since 1871 – the King George was first run in 1937 – and Henderson added: “There’s a bit of history involved, there’s a bit of sentiment involved and there’s a little bit of logic involved – because we need that sort of track. “You will always get better ground there than anywhere else.”

■ SHISHKIN warms up for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at Cheltenham when he faces four rivals in the Listed Betway Sidney Banks Memorial Novices’ Hurdle at Huntingdon this afternoon.

“He looked very good last time, considering the ground and they tell me it was a very good time,” said Henderson.

“He has done everything right. I think he is a good horse – now he has got to go and do it again.”