Adelaide Racing Club

Adelaide Racing Club was a horse racing club which had its origins around 1870 but founded in 1879 in competition with the South Australian Jockey Club. The A.R.C. held their race meetings on the "Old Adelaide Racecourse" (later known as Victoria Park) which they rented from the Adelaide City Council, while the S.A.J.C. owned Morphettville Racecourse freehold.

The club had its origin, following the collapse of the first S.A.J.C., in a meeting called in December 1869 by Sir J. H. Fisher, John Baker, E. Holland, Joseph Gilbert, John Morphett, John Crozier, H. R. Fuller, M.P., and W. W. Tuxford, and a subsequent race run at the "Old Adelaide Racecourse" by a group which included William Blackler, Seth Ferry, Gabriel Bennett, George Church, Dr. Robert Peel and Dr. Thomas Cawley on New Year's Day 1870 and substituting in part for the S.A.J.C.'s customary three-day Summer Meeting.

Around the same time, Bennett, Blackler, Ferry and Peel secured, with a right to enclose 15 acres (6.1 ha) and charge admission, the lease of the Old Course, and several successful events were held there in each of the following three years. In October 1879 a meeting held to formalize a Club decided to adopt a modified version of Victorian Racing Club rules; the committee to consist of the four lessees plus three elected members: G. Church, Henry Hughes, and W. F. Stock were proposed and elected unanimously. C. J. Coates, a tireless worker for the sport, was absent through illness. (Charles James Coates (6 January 1820 – 9 October 1889), a longtime secretary of the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society and outgoing secretary of the S.A.J.C. has been cited as a prime mover.)

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