Chief Stipe

Well if you had a team of horses on the Coast you wouldn't stay at Kumara you would either base yourself in Greymouth, Hokitika or Reefton for the very fact that there is more accommodation, watering and feeding options for man (and Freda) and horse.

OK that explains how the land has never been listed in the asset register in the annual reports.

Well said. Not that it is a positive but there are a lot worse drivers around than Ben Hope and they have had 100's more drives!

JJ and you don't think that others notice how you only pitch up to criticise or undermine BOAY? And you speak of arrogance? Add to that you can't work out why you lost the privilege of the PM function? I think others can work out why. LOL yet you still have freedom to post on BOAY - so I guess some people think I'm kind or stupid!

JJ Flash for your benefit and others the "Report" function is available on all posts. To invoke follow the procedure: In the top right hand corner within the offending post click on the three dots - the drop down menu has an option labeled "Report" - click on this and the offending post will be notified to the Moderator(s). As for your "wise advice" quite frankly I don't take any notice of your advice and as far as I know no one has "Reported" an offending post to a moderator. I don't actually read everything on BOAY.

Retarded it isn't a "proven fact" - it is your OPINION. Rather inelegantly put I might add. You are now on a warning not because of your OPINION but for your fixation on abusing Ben Hope. You have a history of it and it seems that you have a personal ax to grind. I suggest you take it somewhere else.

Since when have you had an "Honest Opinion" JJ? I notice you are quick to post a comment but haven't used the notify the moderator option. I only caught up with Retarded's post by chance.

Well he had to really didn't he. Tim's father owns and bred the horse.

Exactly and that doesn't help it at all - it is a single purpose asset that has no community. However the biggest fundamental issue with Kumara is the track. Now Reefton would know more about this than me and it has been years from when I was on course but from memory Kumara is carved out of the most miserable piece of Pakihi swamp on the whole West Coast. A bog when wet and hard as nails when dry. You'd have to throw a lot of money at it to fix it. But of course we are not worried about the actual product but just the event.

I wasn't referring just to attendance on race day - I was also talking about attendance when work is required and when other community events are being held at the community asset. Being "popular" unfortunately isn't the only factor or indeed a major factor in determining the sustainability of a venue. However you only have to look a the paucity of business cases for each of the AWT's to realise that no one in control of the industry either understands what drives the industry let alone what will sustain it.

Based on what criteria? Attendance - Yeah na. Turnover - yeah na.

Why choose Kumara over the WRC? I know one of Reeftons' beef's is that the criteria for the decision that are being made is not known. It would appear those decision are not made on fundamentals.

You don't get it at all do you? Hokitika always supported Kumara as a RACEDAY. However you completely miss the point. Kumara as a community asset is nothing! It has no community. Your logic regarding it "only being 17 miles up the road" shows a complete misunderstanding of what makes country racing tick. You could apply this dumb logic to Greymouth as Kumara is only 17 miles DOWN the road! The Hokitika Community supported Hokitika racecourse as a VENUE and COMMUNITY ASSET - they won't support Kumara as a Community Asset because it isn't in THEIR community. They also have the sense to understand that Kumara as a venue has serious issues that no matter how much money your threw at it it wouldn't fix it. If you use your logic why would the WRC bother with merging with Kumara why not pitch up to Riccarton and use a couple of the 40 AWT racedays?

I assume you are not talking just about Hokitika people 😉 at Ellerslie! But to quote Cameron George "when you have a good crowd at Ellerslie it doesn't look like it because it is so big and there are so many places to hide"! At Kumara you have nowhere to hide!

No their bed was made FOR them and they chose not to lie in that one. You make the assumption that the strategy chosen by NZTR is the right one however based on their track record to date one could argue that WRC made the right decision with some justification. Please detail what outcome you expected.

What's your point? Wouldn't a better question be - how many people from Hokitika used the venue outside of yesterday or how many painted the fences or how many cleaned the bird shit off the stand seats? I do know that the Westland Racing Club sponsored a race. Kumara is a one use venue that is detached from any significant community. I don't know if things have changed at Reefton but even Reefton has uses outside of its race days - school athletic track in the summer and a rugby field in the winter.

Which according to the Messara blueprint, which all the legislative changes underpin, then that is the agenda. At the moment we are only seeing a stay of execution. Ironically the WRC's action may have been a wake up call for those administrators and helped to achieve that stay of execution.

But that ignores the fundamentals which are the basis of your argument against the likes of Ellerslie? If the pinnacle is not attained on the basis of fundamentals but exaggerated fluff and hype then how is that sustainable in the long run? You said it yourself when you referred to Kumara's financial status cf with the Westland Racing Club. Isn't there a fundamental lesson in there somewhere?

But try telling that to people who are only looking through city real estate value eyes! So assuming they found a purchaser for the property which I imagine would take some time and they have $500k in the kitty. How long is that going to last especially when they would be "investing" in something that they have no control over and is a basket case anyway i.e. Kumara?

Morally and probably legally it wasn't the Club's land to sell. Not that you would have got much for it anyway. As I said earlier probably wouldn't cover the annual deficit of the AWT's!

You are entitled to your view Tesio but you don't appear to have any understanding of country racing nor West Coast racing in particular. If my father was alive today he would respond to your opinion with an educated (albeit West Coast secondary schooled) articulate discourse that would be delivered with such passion and strength that would make Reefton look like a meek school girl. I'll spell it out for you WESTLAND DID NOT GIVE THE FINGER TO THE INDUSTRY. No one really knows why but Kumara became the favoured venue by the racing bureaucrats and gained the title iconic or historical or whatever the hell they gave it. Now Kumara is a shit hole and a veritable dump. The track is built on the poorest piece of dirt on the entire West Coast. It always has been. It gained notoriety as a venue because of an advantageous race day gifted to it and the fact that it played on its hicksville attraction and enticed Cantabrians to venture "over the hill" for a day out with the hill billy's. It gained further notoriety when under threat from the NZRB to force its closure in the early 80's they invited Muldoon to the party - watered and fed him and the day was saved. The same approach was taken with Winston Peters (a brown Muldoon) in later years and again Kumara has been saved. Kumara has a population of 300 but even the locals would admit that that is a bit of an exaggeration and probably includes a few dogs in the total. Westland Racing Club (WRC) was formed in 1865. Both horse codes have raced there over the years. They even had a Hokitika Trotting Cup in the late 19th Century and I was fortunate enough as a child to see the cup in the home of the late Ted Lowe in Hinds. It towered over the NZ Trotting Cups that Ted had alongside it. The WRC like a lot of country clubs was always a community asset from the beginning. Indeed it was the home of the Westland AMP show right from the very beginning and its assets grew because of that. Some may forget that the Metropolitan Trotting Club in Christchurch also grew on the back of the Royal Show as did the Auckland Trotting Club. So rather than bore you with a detailed history of the club I'll make the point that it started as a community asset and has always remained a community asset. Its facilities over the years have had more than one purpose - I recall once seeing the Moscow Circus there (a real circus with real Lions and Elephants!). Hokitika a town of 3,500 - a tidy clean modern town and a relatively forward thinking town when you compare it to its larger cousin up the road Greymouth. My father was a committee member and donated a lot of his time and his business staff time to helping keep things ship shape. I remember helping him at working bees when I was a lad. He sponsored races and along with the local Parish priest (Father Bill Middleton) helped build a trotting training track on the inside of the course proper during the 70's. Now the towns on the West Coast are all very parochial - there are actually provinces within provinces e.g. Buller, Inangahua, Grey, Grey Valley, Westland, South Westland. It is understandable that they are because each of them has their own challenges for survival and have eked out an existence in a difficult region to do that. Sadly you can't live on scenic views and fresh air alone. So when the administrators once again wielded their big stick and once again made Kumara the protected species what outcome would you expect from the Hokitika community? Why would they sell their asset which morally (arguably legally) is a community asset and spend their cash on moving to Kumara? Kumara might only be 17 miles away but there is nothing there! No businesses like my father's to sponsor races nor more importantly to help maintain assets. No youth groups like my Harrier club to use the venue every week as part of their Sunday run. Nothing! Zip! Nada! Not even a venue or facility good enough to securely stable and train horses on! The assumption is falsely made by the administrators that because it has Racing in its club title the assets are Industry assets. I'm afraid they are having a rude awakening. So Tesio when you say WRC gave the finger to the industry I suggest you think again. What WRC didn't do was give in and give the finger to THEIR COMMUNITY!

Reefton that makes too much sense!

That's a daft proposal but reflective of a CEO who believes you gallop a horse everyday! The cynic in me says there is an alternative reason for it as it benefits only one club not the three. "Squeeze" is the appropriate term for it. I imagine there will be a "take it or leave it" caveat to the "proposal"!

The industry gave them the finger. Before you all get starry eyed with sanctimony it might pay to remember what the Messara report wants to happen to the West Coast. Also don't forget that Reefton has had a stay of execution only. You also may wish to look at the "extra" day on the Coast as a day for THE COAST not for Hokitika. All very easy to apply revisionist history but don't forget what the Agenda is. The didn't "give the money away" to some dodgy cause nor piss it up against the wall which we see happening repeatedly at so called Premier Clubs they gave it back to their community. Yes 150 years of voluntary work and stuff all support from the Ivory Towers. Any civic minded non-self interested person would applaud them giving back to the community that had created the asset. Let's face it we are only talking about a quarter of the annual deficit that the new sand dune track will create at Riccarton!

But not Greymouth?