Hawke’s Bay Spring Carnival racing: Spring in the step as racing set for return to Hastings

Racing returns to the Hastings Racecourse on May 21.

Hawke’s Bay Racing has confirmed the Spring Racing Carnival will return to the Hastings Racecourse this year.

It follows an 11-race jump-outs meeting last week and a six-race full-race Thursday afternoon meeting welcoming members and the racing industry back on May 21, with two graduation races and four for maidens, each with stakes of $17,000, including $9520 to the winners.

It will be the first full race meeting in Hastings in 20 months since the abandonment of the second day of the Spring Carnival after just one race in September 2024, among a series of safety-based disruptions of race meetings in New Zealand.

About $2 million has been spent on recambering sections of the track, with this month’s races a prelude to the return of the Spring Carnival later in the year.

But longer-term plans are also in place for the sale of the central Hastings racecourse for residential development and the building of a new venue for horse racing on the outskirts of Flaxmere.

Since the 2024 closure, feature races usually held in Hastings, have been raced elsewhere, such as the 2024 Livamol Spring Classic at Te Rapa, Hamilton, the 2025 classic at Ellerslie, Auckland and the Hawke’s Bay Cup at Trentham last year, and Ōtaki last month.

The Hawke’s Bay Steeplechase and Hawke’s Bay Hurdles are scheduled to be raced at Woodville on July 12.

Three Hawke’s Bay race days have been held at the Waipukurau Racecourse in the last year – the Waipukurau Cup meeting in November, the Wairoa Cup meeting in February and the most recent Anzac Day weekend meeting on April 26.

Darin Balcomb, who returned to the role of Hawke’s Bay Racing CEO this week, initially on a one-year contract, said dates for the Spring Racing Carnival will be confirmed in the new season’s calendar to be finalised in the next month.

He expects a day’s racing in August, preceding the first day of the carnival tentatively set for September 12.

It won’t include the 1400m Spring Carnival Triple Crown opener and first Group 1 race of the New Zealand season, which will be raced at Ellerslie and return to Hawke’s Bay in 2027, but it will include the Sir Colin Meads Handicap.

The second day is expected to be on September 26, featuring the Group 1 1600m Triple Crown second leg and 3-year-old classics the Hawke’s Bay Guineas, and the third leg, the Livamol Classic, raced for $550,000 in stakes last year, is expected back in Hastings on October 10.

Balcomb said the proposals for the greenfields Flaxmere racecourse development, with a cost of over $70 million, are in the “plan-change stage” with Hastings District Council, remaining on track for a move to the new venue in time for the Spring Carnival in 2029.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a completely new racecourse,” he said. It’s exciting for the whole region.”

Doug Laing is a Hawke’s Bay Today reporter, based in Napier, with 53 years in the news game covering events and issues throughout the region for most of that time, including occasional horse racing matters.