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.