Sideline Sid Sports correspondant & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

For a horse racing tragic like Sideline Sid, Melbourne Cup Day is like Christmas – plenty of build-up and anticipation only to often have disappointment in the afternoon.

Last Friday afternoon the old fella ventured out to Gate Pa racecourse for a day of thoroughbred racing at its best (as the promotional advertising said).

What Sid found was a well-organised day with preparations for a large crowd - and hardly anyone in attendance.

While records tell the tale of horse racing first making its formal entrance in the Western Bay in 1874 at the present course, the Western Bay of Plenty Maori population held their own picnic style meetings in earlier times.

Bethlehem was the site of some of the earliest meetings followed by a course at the Waikareao Estuary, where meetings were organised by the Judea locals, with bookmakers and betting aplenty especially at the annual Christmas Carnival.

Sideline Sid first joined the Bay of Plenty Racing Club as a relative youngster in the late 1960's. Everyone in town went the races, when the horses came to the Gate Pa course six or seven times a year. The only people, who didn't welcome the horses coming to Tauranga, were the local shopkeepers, who always moaned that the races took money away from their tills.

Who could forget the jackpot fever that gripped the country in the early 1970s.

Few of the Bay of Plenty Racing Club committee of the time, could imagine the impact that took New Zealand by storm, when they introduced the nations first (legal) jackpot at their meeting held on the 22 March 1969.

The country was abuzz with rumours and tall stories, when a Te Aroha transport operator won nearly half a million dollars for a outlay of $2 in July 1970.

Such was the success and government concerns of family money being dragged out of the economy, that the last big pot terminated at Te Awamutu in July 1972 with $831, 564 in the pool.

It was ironic that a protest in the last race saw court proceeding drag on for some time, with a number of lawyers, getting their hands on a considerable amount of the money.

The local racing club didn't rest on it laurels with innovative ventures and so began the Stars Travel Stakes, which at one time ranked as the second richest weight of age race in Australasia, behind the Cox Plate. Backed by Western Bay icon Bob Owens, the big race each March, attracted the best horses in New Zealand to the Gate Pa course.

Sideline Sid could only wonder at the races the other day how the halcyon days of the jackpots and huge crowds that came to the weight for age championship of New Zealand, was allowed to disappear over the next forty years.

However, we live in a different age, where we have wall to wall horse racing on Track Side TV, which propels nothing more than turnover often on obscure races from throughout Australia.

Racing Tauranga, as the club is now called, is certainly trying to get people back to the races.

They have created a good environment with reasonably priced and good quality food and staff, which focuses on service. The hugely popular Christmas holiday race days attract big crowds, however on cold dreary days of winter there is little incentive to venture to the local races.

Seeya at the Game