A race track (or 'racetrack', 'racing track' or 'racing circuit') is a purpose-built facility for racing of animals (e.g. horse racing or greyhound racing), vehicles, or athletes. A race track may also feature grandstands or concourses. Some motorsport tracks are called speedways.
A racetrack is a permanent facility or building. Racecourse is an alternate term for a horse racing track, found in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. Race tracks built for bicycles are known as velodromes. Circuit is a common abbreviation for racetrack, given the usual circuitous configuration of most race tracks, allowing races to occur over several laps.
A race course, as opposed to a racecourse, is a term for non-permanent tracks for sports, particularly road running, water sports, road racing or rallying. Many sports usually held on racetracks can also occur on temporary but purpose built tracks, such as the Monaco Grand Prix in Formula One.
Read more about Race Track: History, Surfaces, Configurations, Motorsport
Famous quotes containing the words race and/or track:
“There are times when they seem so small! And then again, although they never seem large, there is a vastness behind them, a past of indefinite complexity and marvel, an amazing power of absorbing and assimilating, which forces one to suspect some power in the race so different from our own that one cannot understand that power. And ... whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask oneself: “Well, who are the best people to live with?””
—Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904)
“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)