Kumara: a colourful racing survivor

Press, 11 January 1986, Page 24

Kumara: a colourful racing survivor

By

J. J. BOYLE

The Kumara Racing Club is one of South Island racing's most colourful survivors, and if the weather is kind for its centennial meeting today it might put another of its impressive list of records into the books.

In 1948 the Royal Commission on Gaming and Racing recommended that the Kumara club’s licence be revoked. The threat of closure was, apparently all that was needed to rally support for the club. There was a big roll-up for the club’s 1949 meeting and

patrons bet a record sum of £16,468. Since then the club has successfully resisted attempts to make it centralise on another West Coast course, and the accompanying controversy has, if anything, enhanced the appeal of its holiday meeting. Two years ago Kumara patrons bet *227,482 oncourse, more than the Southland Racing Club could come up with for its cup day programme run that same afternoon.

The Kumara Racing Club has done today’s occasion

proud by ; compiling a review of its first 100 years.

The booklet bears testimony of some industrious research by Brian Fitzgerald and Heather Sinclair, and will be on sale on the course today. Some early records-could not be located, but there are interesting chapters identified with the history of one of New Zealand’s most successful one-day clubs — a club able to present a race meeting that has that appealing ingredient of atmosphere many metropolitan clubs cannot offer.