A couple of first-time winners stole the show as the masses sweltered through the country's hottest New Year's Day temperatures at Hawke's Bay Racing's Hastings races yesterday.
On one-hand there was 12-year-old Grace Whaanga who, having just packed dad off to his late-shift at work after about Race 4, won a $500 Interislander travel voucher simply by picking heads and tails through about five tosses of a coin in the main straight near the finishing post.
The Taradale Intermediate pupil reckoned she hadn't won anything before, and mum Maria was more than chuffed with the outcome of her premonitionary advice: "I said to her if she wins we're going to the South Island."
A short while after her triumph and just a few metres away on the finish-line itself was the triumph of an even younger lady that hadn't won anything before yet scooped a pot of $19,000.
That was four-year-old Hastings-trained Red Tiara which hadn't garnered a cent from four previous races, but which, trained by part-owner Kelly Burne on the course and ridden by apprentice jockey Leah Hemi, won the NZB Insurance Peal Series maiden for fillies and mares, claiming stakes of $7500 and series bonuses of $11,500, the first return for a $920 fee to enter the series. It was one of three Hastings-trained winners during the day.
Less successful on the day were members of the Punters Club, punters who'd bought 473 club shares at $10 each and who club member Mike White reckoned would be punters happy to be freed of the obligation of sorting out their own winners for the day. "If they get their money back they're happy," he said. With $1360 riding on two also-rans trailing Red Tiara, the final dividend on the shares was about $5.60.
For something different, there was singing in the Birdcage, after Ngati Kahungunu Iwi Inc chairman Ngahiwi Tomoana presented a trophy to the team behind the winner of the Kahungunu Haka, a 1200-metres sprint sponsored to honour kapa haka festival Te Matatini which is expected to draw up to 20,000 people to Hastings next month.
The trophy, Mr Tomoana said before finishing with Tutira Mai Nga Iwi and urging everyone to sing along, also honoured late Kahungunu trainer Eric Ropiha who died in 2013. He had 716 winners from 1948 to 2001, including 1960 Caulfield Cup winner Ilumquh. The race was won by another Punters Club spoiler in Awapuni mare Platinum Express, which provided the third win of the day for jockey and holidays-racing specialist Robert (R.J.) Hannam.
One punter at the Birdcage fence is gracious in defeat. "It was a great ride," he said of the front-running triumph. "She drew 10 (at the starting barrier). That's what turned me off."
The races, with an air of nostalgia retained in the form of the historic Tote House, largely unused for modern race days but with about a dozen of its original 80-plus windows open for punting, mainly below the worn ribbons and face of the tote indicator.
They supplemented dozens of other permanent and pop-up betting windows around the course for what was part of the 36-meeting Interislander Summer Festival, which promotes the family-day out concept.
It's success is generally guaranteed, but yesterday the crowds were in early.
Hawke's Bay Racing manager Andrew "Butch" Castles said the crowd was "certainly" bigger than at last year's New Year's Day races - "probably as big as it's been in the last 10 years."