SAJC

South Australian Jockey Club is the principal race club in South Australia, Australia.

The first horse racing events in South Australia took place at a largely-attended picnic meeting held over 1 and 2 January 1838. In August 1838, riding his grey gelding Charley, Fred Handcock won the first steeplechase event ever held in South Australia. Various racing events (including match races) continued throughout the 1840s, but without a regulating body.

The first incarnation of the South Australian Jockey Club (S.A.J.C.) was in 1850, when it ran a race programme at Brighton on 14 February. Thomas Shayle was the Hon. Sec. and Edward Strike the Clerk of the Course.

Many subsequent clubs were formed and folded (one in 1869 through bankruptcy then revived in 1873 after its debts were paid by a consortium of businessmen), variously named South Australian or Adelaide Jockey Club and races were run under Jockey Club rules within and outside these organisations at various locations: Dry Creek, the East Parklands, Thebarton and Glenelg.

The Club was re-formed in 1875 with Stewards: Sir John Morphett, Sir Henry Ayers, John Crozier M.L.C., W. Cavenagh, M.P., and Philip Levi. The Committee consisted of: G. Bennett, Henry W. K. Simms, M.P. Judge: Mr. E. M. Bagot. Starters: Henry Hughes and G. Bennett. Clerk of the Course: J. Boose. The first handicapping committee consisted of William B. Rounsevell, Gabriel Bennett and Henry Hughes.

Thomas Elder donated a considerable property at Morphettville, known as the "Elder Course", to the Club, which held its first meeting there on 3 January 1876. The committee, with an income stream from the "tote" (totalizator) borrowed heavily to fund improvements to the course. A breakaway group, the Adelaide Racing Club acquired the lease to the "Old Adelaide Racecourse" (later known as Victoria Park) from the Adelaide City Council and until amalgamation, continued to hold race meetings there.

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