Editorial: Taking a thoughtful punt on sport of kings

Doug Laing

Punting on the horses is not everyone's cup of tea. There'd even those be those who might want it outlawed.

But the simple fact is that a day at the races scores on a number of fronts, not the least as an entertainment event but most importantly as a celebration of the part the gee-gees
play in the economy and culture of a region.

Saturday at the Hastings racecourse was just a taste, a day when horses, riders, trainers and owners competed for their shares of stakemoney totalling $180,000, including recently increased minimums of $10,000 for maiden races, for horses yet to win a race.

With horses from as far north as Waikato, where there was another race meeting with more than $300,000 at stake, it's an indication it's more than sports and entertainment. It's an industry.

In Hawke's Bay, there are 17 race days each year, including 13 at the Hastings course and two each at Waipukurau and Wairoa.

The biggest are the Spring Carnival in Hastings, a month-long festival of three race days, with stakes totalling more than $1.5 million, and New Year's Day races, a classic event rooted in the earliest days of racing in Hawke's Bay, more than 150 years ago in the 1860s.

Conservatively, thoroughbred racing creates more than 300 full-time jobs in the Hawke's Bay-Gisborne region, with wages totalling more than $20 million a year and at least $35 million contributed to the region's gross domestic product.

Some evidence of this was on Saturday, when there were more than 70 race-day staff, from the Hawke's Bay Racing Centre's own employees to totalisator, bar, catering and security crews.

The racing links multiple business interests, and Hawke's Bay's name and vista are on racing-channel screens across the country, and sometimes Australia and further afield, which is why so many answer the call for sponsorship that helps keep it all afloat.

Where this all stands is being tested as racing clubs face costs of upgrading and even replacing buildings that have served for so long.

Like the horses themselves, it's an investment worth thinking about.