The Petronas Twins Towers are one of the tallest and the most iconic buildings in the world. Before the creation of Menara 118, the twin skyscrapers basically represented Malaysia in the modern era. Of course, the towers weren’t always there from the beginning so do you know what occupied the land before the existence of the iconic buildings?
The answer to that is a horse racecourse, or more specifically, the Selangor Turf Club. Before this piece of information gets lost in history, let’s learn a little more about the once-popular race track that conquered the large land of Kuala Lumpur City Centre.
The Selangor Turf Club was first established in 1896 by colonial administrator, Sir William George Maxwell, long before independence, a time when Malaysia was still known as Malaya. The club was located at Jalan Ampang, on the ground now occupied by the Petronas Twin Towers. It was said that races were held for over 100 years before it ultimately closed down to make way for the development of the skyscrapers. So how did the idea of a horse racecourse come to be?
Obviously, this was the work of the British during the British administration since horse racing was a popular recreation amongst their people and Europeans. It was also during the administration that two other race tracks were established in Penang in 1864 and in Perak in 1889; the Penang Turf Club and the Perak Turf Club. The application for the establishment of the Selangor Turf Club was approved by Sir Frank Swettenham who was Resident-General of the Federated Malay States at the time. Apparently, he was also a very keen horseman and sportsman.
The racecourse hosted its first-ever race meeting in the same year of its opening where there were seven races per day over two consecutive days for each meeting. The racecourse turned out to be a huge success over the next few years, however, horse racing activities came to a halt during the First World War from 1914 to 1918. During this time, racing at the Selangor Turf Club was only used to raise funds for the war.
Activities resumed as normal after the First World War ended and in 1939, the Selangor Gold Cup, a forerunner of the Tunku Gold Cup was formally introduced. Things seemed to be going smoothly but once again, the racecourse was momentarily closed down during the Second World War from 1941 to 1943. It was never mentioned if there were any racing activities carried out to raise funds for the war during those years. It is unknown if the racecourse was even accessible to anyone during that time.
Regardless, after the war ended, business started booming once more, especially during the 1950s when audiences came flocking in to watch more horse racing events. The most successful race attended exceeded an average of 14,000 and made a profit of $70 million (RM 325,745,000.00 today)! Now that we’ve covered a lot about its history, without going into too much detail, let’s now skip to the part about how the land came to be how it is today.
According to several sources, it was said that in 1990, the large land was bought by Malaysian businessman Ananda Krishnan, an associate of then Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir, for RM110 million. However, the purchase was not necessarily for his own project as he resold the land to Petronas in 1991 for RM681 million. Another source reported that it was sold for RM900 million but this was never confirmed.
Once the deal was made, the Selangor Turf Club then held its last racing event in 1992 before closing down to make way for the development of the Petronas Twin Towers. Commissioned by Dr. Mahathir, the Petronas group hired an American architecture firm led by architect Cesar Pelli for the project. Fast forward to 1993, the twin buildings began construction and were opened to the public in 1999.
As for what happened to the old racecourse, it has since been moved to another location. The Selangor Turf Club is now located in the Sungai Besi recreation zone in Seri Kembangan where it remained active till this day. After learning the story of the racecourse that once occupied a large land at KLCC, are you curious to check it out at its current location?
Sources: SelangorTurfClub, BritishMalaya, Twitter, Facebook, PetronasTwinTowers, TheEdgeMalaysia
