Currently, just two racecourses in Sweden offer steeplechasing. Täby racecourse, located about 15 km north of Stockholm,is the most major course in Scandinavia, offering about 50 days of racing per year, including some group races. It offers mainly flat racing, with a limited number of steeplechases and hurdles races on a figure-of-8 jumps course. Strömsholm racecourse, which lies about 140 km west of Stockholm, is a provincial racecourse that is famous for a single day of steeplechasing each year in mid June, when the Swedish Grand National is run. That race is over 4 500 metres for total prize money of SEK 240.000, equivalent to about EUR 24 000, and for the famous Swedish Grand National Annual Challenge Trophy, donated by the late Mrs Mirabel Topham in her generous response to a request for permission to use the name Grand National.

Täby racecourseis now to be replaced by a newly-built course which will open in 2016. The board of the Swedish Horseracing Authority does not want to build a separate jumps course. Instead, they suggest just putting on hurdles races over removable hurdles on the main track, and no longer putting on any steeplechases. The final decision will be reached by a vote, which is to be held on October 17^th.

It is hard to imagine that the Swedish Grand National could survive for long without steeplechasing at Täby, so the vote next Saturday seems to be almost literally a matter of life or death for steeplechasing in Sweden.