FIRST TIME AWAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 58, 5 September 1940, Page 13

FIRST TIME AWAY

WANGANUI RACING RECORD

(Special to the "Evening Post.")

WANGANUI, September 4,

I For the' first time since racing com--1 menced in Wanganui seventy-two years ago, the Wanganui Jockey Club has had to organise a. meeting away from home. The first race meetings were held in 1848 at Aramoho, where Mr. George Walker had a stud farm; then the venue was changed to a site approximately the same as that used today. "The horses in. those days went a long way in a long time," states a chronicler. All sorts of horses were raced. Many of them were in daily use on farms and on delivery carts. Racing received a great impetus when the military were in the settlement and after the Imperial troops left in 1874 the club was in difficulties^ At a reorganisation meeting Mr. Freeman R. Jackson was elected as president, and he brought the club to a fine position during his twenty-five years of office. The first cup after the reorganisation was won by True Blue, ridden by J. P. Belcher. The totalisator was introduced about 1879.

This year the Spring Meeting is to be held at Palmerston North, as the military authorities, have taken over the racecourse.