Racing: Kumara gears up for big day

Kumara still allows patrons to BYO. Photo / Thinkstock

Kumara today will re-establish for the 50th-something time the world record it holds as its own.

No other racetrack in the world packs into itself a crowd 15 to 18 times the population of its hometown.

However, Kumara, official population somewhere around 300 - which much be the easiest census anywhere to do - will swell to 5000-plus in balmy conditions this afternoon.

For the Melbourne Cup to achieve the same proportionate figures the VRC would have to pack Flemington with around 56 million.

Try getting a beer among that lot.

That won't be a difficult accomplishment to achieve this afternoon. While all others are banning the public from taking alcohol to entertainment venues, Kumara continues to allow patrons to bring what they like.

For a racetrack that was built on a swamp, Kumara - south of Greymouth - has had disproportionate personality and publicity for its annual race meeting through the years.

Perhaps it gained a level of affection and notoriety earlier last century when the bush in the swamp in the middle of the track was so high the horses went out of sight in the back straight. At best, a couple of jockeys' caps were visible.

This is recorded because when the borough held its centenary in 1959, Dick Bell, who had attended the first Kumara meeting in 1887, was still alive.

"You had to wait until they swung into the home straight to see where your horse was," he was reported as saying at the time.

It nearly all ended in the 1980s, when racing's bosses decided that if natural attrition was going to be the method by which New Zealand's proliferation of racetracks was to be reduced then Kumara might as well be the first to go.

Enter Prime Minister Rob Muldoon as a recipient of Kumara's legendary on-course hospitality at the end of which he said Kumara would never be axed while he was alive.

A quarter of a century later we are still waiting for the first racetrack to be closed because it was forced to.

Don't bet on it ever being Kumara.

* A 5 cent donation from every bet placed at the meeting goes to the Pike River appeal.