Letters: Horse racing is a sport

Racing is a sport, writes a reader.

Peter Williams (Opinion, September 8. Three topics Peter raised after Australian John Messara produced positive recommendations for racing improvements not to Peter's liking.

1, He states racing is not a sport, Peter, many people do not gamble but follow it as a sport?

2, So in the Bay of Plenty region, there are 25 days of racing a year, two days a month. Yet that action is spread over three courses. Surely it makes sense to centralise to one which, all things being equal, would be Tauranga.

Like any course in the Waikato/Bay of Plenty region, Tauranga often has H10 or wet conditions from June through to September, yet Peter states 25 days of racing or the average of a meeting every second weekend makes sense. No track would stand a meeting that close together during those months; they would become dangerous, does he think jockeys would be happy to ride?

3, Somehow Te Teko, home of the Whakatane Racing Club is spared in the report. It has three meetings a year. " Why is it spared."

It has probably the best winter surface of any area in New Zealand, due to its porous soil. Often requires water putting on instead of draining off as is a problem with most winter tracks.

Because of this surface, April, August, September, four trial meetings are held to allow trainers to prepare their horses for the rich Hawke's Bay and Australian spring races, fast gallops they struggle to get on their home tracks.

At two very recent trial days, 227 horses raced one day and 180 on the other, showing the importance this track is to trainers from Ruakaka, Pukekohe through Waikato/Bay of Plenty.

At one meeting, the top stable, Te Akau had 59 horses gallop. So three race meetings and four perfectly timed trials to suit the wider area show the importance this club is to the wider racing fraternity.

Peter may have other suggestions to fit these horses, but the all-weather track at Cambridge is five years away, so best to utilise Te Teko as so many trainers request.

Fred Delahunty
Mt Maunganui

Danger for unborn children

Seen that charming picture of smiling Jacinda with her baby in her arms? Lovely, heart-warming, a great image for her government.

Strangely, there's a shadow that's smudging the image.

Jacinda said recently that child welfare would be the eighth priority in her government's 12 priorities, adding her own noble pledge "to make New Zealand the best place in the world to be a child".

Unfortunately, her government plans to torpedo that ideal.

Every child commences life at conception and develops in the womb, and through birth enters upon its life in the world. Abortion takes one in every five unborn lives in New Zealand, but in each case, mothers are exonerated from prosecution by section 183 of the Crimes Act.

So Jacinda's shining rhetoric is belied by her government's request to the Law Commission to provide a plausible way to call abortion merely a Health issue, and allow it at any time during pregnancy, up to full term, nine months – an extreme that overseas has led to sex selection, and late-term murder of the disabled.

If successful, this government should cancel its signature on the Bill of Rights – the first being the right to life.

Far from being the best place in the world to be a child, NZ will be among the most dangerous.

Don Brebner
Omokoroa