The Meadows Greyhound Racing Track is popular for being home of the Australian Cup. The Meadows boasts itself to be the world’s ‘most forward thinking and unique’ greyhound racing associations with first class facilities and quality of service for all occasions.
The Meadows holds weekly race meetings on Saturday nights and alternate Wednesday afternoons. It also holds trial races on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It also holds events all year round whether race-related or not. It offers a multi-purpose function venue for conferences and special occasions like weddings, baptism, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. The function venue can accommodate over 600 people making it an ideal venue for hosting large reunions and gatherings. Aside from this, The Meadows Racing Park also offers full TAB facilities whether you are downstairs or upstairs. When you get hungry, there are dining room facilities upstairs and a snack bar downstairs that you can go to. The Meadows Greyhound Race Track features surface lure distances of 275, 518, 600 and 725 meters. Kenneling time before the race starts is set at 6 pm to 6:45 pm.
Melbourne Greyhound Racing Association or MGRA is the governing body that operates all races and other activities held in The Meadows. It was in 1955 when MGRA was formed, as it branched out from GOTBA, registering itself as a body to hold the license to race greyhounds. They first operated at Maribrynong before moving to North Melbourne the next year. It was in 1961 when the Olympic Park Trust started planning to move the racing out of North Melbourne.
In 1994, negotiations arose tackling The Meadows’ relocation at Broadmeadows. In 1996, racing was transferred to Sandown providing for greyhound racing on the northern part of Melbourne. Three years after, a new track was constructed that took 18 months to complete. The completion of the new track was the start of MGRA’s new era, attracting a huge crowd of mostly younger people as audience to greyhound racing.
In 2001, the SKY Channel agreed to air Saturday night races in The Meadows all over Australia. Two more years passed, and a revamped Australian Cup Carnival became one of the most awaited events in the sport of greyhound racing in Melbourne. The 2001 Australian Cup was notable making it to record books wen Graeme Bate’s “Blackjack Tom” was joined on the line by “Most Awesome” of Max Burdiken. It was the very first time in Group 1 history that such finish happened.