A winner on the Hastings Racecourse, where racing itself will be the winner on Thursday, with the first race meeting on the track since September 28, 2024.
A winner on the Hastings Racecourse, where racing itself will be the winner on Thursday, with the first race meeting on the track since September 28, 2024.
Some of New Zealand’s leading racehorse trainers will be on hand as Hawke’s Bay Racing bounces back with a low-key return to its Hastings track on Thursday, after an absence of 600 days.
Among those heading for Hawke’s Bay are Cambridge trainer Stephen Marsh, Lisa Latta, of Awapuni (Palmerston North)and the Matamata partnership of David O’Sullivan and Andrew Scott, currently second, third and fourth respectively on the New Zealand trainers’ premiership.
Latta, one of the most successful trainers at Hastings, with 109 wins to her credit, said: “We’ve been looking forward to get back to racing in Hastings.”
Hawke’s Bay Racing chief executive Darin Balcombe said: “We’re all getting really excited, so once we get through this and come out the back of it, we’ll be getting the packages out ready for the Spring Racing Carnival later in the year.”
Recambering has been undertaken in the hope it will carry racing in Hastings through to the establishment a new racing centre near Flaxmere, projected for 2029.
Balcombe expects a “testing” time on Thursday, with 15mls of rain in two days, and not much to dry out, turning track conditions “towards the heavy side.”
But improve was expected, with fine weather from Tuesday afternoon to and including race day.
Fields for the three-hour, six-race programme, with the first at 12.15pm, were decided on Tuesday, 600 days since the calamity of September 28, 2024, when the second day of the carnival was abandoned because of track safety issues after just one race.
With limited public facilities open, it’s regarded as an “industry” meeting, with three races for maidens chasing their first wins, and “Rating 65” horses that have mainly had just one win.
Awapuni trainer Lisa Latta after a Hawke's Bay Gold Cup win – one of 109 wins her horses have had in Hastings. She returns to the course on Thursday with two starters for the first race meeting in Hastings since September 28, 2024.
Latta, who includes a Hawke’s Bay Gold Cup, the Hawke’s Bay Guineas and 3-year-old fillies classic the Gold Trail Stakes among her horses’ triumphs, raced horses at three meetings in Waipukurau in November, February and April to keep racing going in the Bay.
She will on Thursday start 3-year-old gelding Brian in the maiden over 1400m opening the meeting, and in-form 4-year-old Port Chalmer in the 2100m fifth race.
It’ll be free entry at the gate and facilities will be open to the general public in the Members’ Stand, with a particular lure being a $25,000 prize in an on-course promotion based on picking the winners of the last four races.
Doug Laing is a Hawke’s Bay Today reporter, with 53 years’ experience in journalism. Since starting a second stint at the Napier Daily Telegraph in 1987, he has covered most aspects of events and issues in Hawke’s Bay, including some of the region’s successes on the race track.
