What on earth are these?!

[SirSquidalot]

Morning all,

Hope you're all having a cracking Christmas! So the in laws bought me Tim Peake's photography book. The image of Christchurch NZ seems to have hundreds of these ovals dotted around. What are they? Thoughts so far are running/dirt racing ovals. Any of the PH elders have a better idea?!

Alex

[-Pete-]

Happy Christmas!

They're tracks for horse racing, you can see the stables and horses. I guess they race buggies?

[RogerExplosion]

Yep what he said. I'd say for training pacing/trotting horses.

[CubanPete]

Ireland have a lot of these too.

[AndySheff]

And Sweden.