40 years since Dear Sir

It’s been almost forty years since the Hororata Cup and harness racing said goodbye to the Hororata Racecourse.

The site of the track, the Hororata Domain, holds historical significance in racing history with the first race meetings taking place in the late 19^th century – the original racing club was the first provincial club in the country. During the dark days of World War 2 American and New Zealand forces used the area as a training camp.

Today the domain continues to play a central role in community events.

The Highland Games festival, which attracts large crowds every year, sees burly men with far too much facial hair tossing cabers while wearing their finest kilts. There are also vintage car club rallies held in the area along with a rifle club.

As for the racing itself there are some truly great names on the Hororata Trotting Cup.  In 1971 Arapaho prevailed over Robalan while Noble Charles scored a double in the cup in 1973 and 1974.

The John Hay trained MacNeachdainn headed off the great Blossom Lady to win the Cup in the 1990 edition. Winners of the Hororata Cup when it was being run at Addington include Muscle Machine in 2003 and Charles Brosnan, who took the title in 2008.

The last tussle for the title held at the Hororata Domain site proper was in the year 1984 – financial pressures on the club making maintaining the meeting at its Hororata location an impossibility. On that last, glorious occasion – an occasion seen by over 4000 on-course patrons – Dear Sir (Sir Dalrae) trained and driven Richard Brosnan, won the Cup over the Jack Smolenski trained King Aureu.

The next year, off a 30m handicap mark, Dear Sir went very close to repeating the feat at Ashburton when defeated by Lew Foy. A quick glance at the figures from the last Hororata Domain meeting show just how popular a send-off the meeting really was – total turnover topping out at a little over $600’000!

Recent years have seen the feature race card shift to the grass of Mount Harding Racecourse, Methven, the grass surface fitting when looking back into the historic past of the Hororata Cup itself.

Last year the grass track specialist Buckskin prevailed.

Not surprisingly this year a class field will once contest the feature. The Hope runner, the ageless Homebush Lad, heads those with exposed form, having beaten a good field at the Waikouaiti meeting last week.  Heza Sport, Bryce’s Meddle, and Jimmy James Maguire add depth to the event that’ll be contested over a distance of 3000m from behind the tapes.

The full fields for the day can be found here.

A great history to be celebrated once again on Sunday.

(Image credits from Hororata.org.nz and selwynlibraries)

by Harnesslink Media