After last week's effort trying to tip the winner of the Melbourne Cup, I have decided that there will be no more gazing into the crystal ball.
However, I intend to keep with the horseracing theme for this week's contribution as the races come to Tauranga this Saturday.
Going to the races goes right back to the start of the arrival of Europeans in New Zealand in the 1840s. Just as cricket in Tauranga was introduced by the militia, (in the 1860s) so too the arrival of the military saw the introduction of horse racing to New Zealand.
The first formal racing club in Tauranga was the Tauranga Jockey Club formed in 1873. Maori racing carnivals were held for many years at venues such as Bethlehem, Katikati, Omokoroa and Te Puke, usually on the local foreshore. The most popular and longest enduring picnic meeting was a course on the foreshore of the Waikareao Estuary.
However, as the unlicensed picnic meeting fell from favour, the present Bay of Plenty Racing Club became established at Gate Pa. During the 1970s the local club was recognised as amongst the most innovative in the country.
With WFA (weight for age) racing, producing the best contests between the top horses in the country, the BOP Racing Club introduced the Stars Travel Stakes in 1968. Backed by Tauranga icon Bob Owens, the WFA event became the match race to decide the best horse in the country each autumn.
With inflation having run havoc with major race stakes, it seems hard to believe that the Stars Travel Stakes became the second richest WFA race in Australasia – second only to the Cox Plate. An indication of the standing of the Stars Travel is provided by the $20,000 stake in 1972 with the Auckland Cup field of the same year racing for $25,000.
While eventually the race to keep up the stake money was given up, the second big BOP Racing innovation of the 1970s took the punters of the country by storm.
Because the old sweepstake betting, which were in vogue at the turn of the century had never been revoked, the local club used a loophole in the law to introduce jackpots to New Zealand racing in the 1970s.
To say that they were a sensation is like saying that the All Blacks have a following in the country. While the loophole in the law meant that all the pool had to be returned to the punters, unbelievable numbers flocked to the racecourses of the country, chasing the pot of gold. Crowds of up to 30,000 were chasing pots of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The first real big winner was a carrier from Te Aroha, who won $482,687 at Matamata for an outlay of $2. Unfortunately Uncle Scrooge (the government of the day) killed the pots off, mainly because they weren't getting a tax cut from the colossal amounts of (then) money being invested. For the record, the first jackpot was run by the BOP Racing Club on March 22, 1969, with the last being the 800,000 pot at Te Awamutu on the July 29, 1972.
Today, Racing Tauranga has found its place in the national thoroughbred racing scene. The long running and highly successful Japan/New Zealand Trophy in the autumn is the clubs flag bearer, with the highly popular Christmas holiday race days having the occasional punters flocking in their thousands, to Gate Pa.

Happy punting on Saturday.