Karekare’s famous beach race will be resurrected on Saturday, February 28 thanks to a new organizing team, generous sponsors, and horse clubs which wrote to the small rural community west of Auckland offering support after 2013 looked like the last of the now iconic events.

“With the same few folk putting in the hard yards for 29 years and with fewer horses entering each year, we’d called a halt,” says local dad Bob Cook, part of the organizing committee. “But public support suggested we should give it a go with some new blood in harness, tapping some fresh horse-club contacts and combining with the Karekare Surf Club’s 80th anniversary celebrations.”

Cook’s two daughters attend Lone Kauri School and are part of Junior Surf –and both the school and the surf club, which are beneficiaries of the event, are based in a beach-side community too small for locals to manage all the funding themselves.

Hence the beach race, which every 18 months or so draws visitors in for a beach carnival, for sweepstake betting, and for the stirring sight of horses and ponies thundering down the black sand beach, with its backdrop of volcanic cliffs and pounding surf.

“We’ve managed even more reasons for horse owners and spectators to come this year,” Cook says. “Race entrants have permission to camp and make a weekend of it with their horses, prize money is up, Fulton Hogan has come on board to control traffic and the passage of the Piha shuttle to help those parking at Piha, and visitors will also see a re-enactment of an early surf rescue.”

Visitors will watch a number of classes from thoroughbred to ponies to miniature horses pulling miniature sulkies – the Kidz Kartz always popular – plus novelty races, a great leveler as often the smaller ponies manage sacks, apples and repeated mounts and dismounts better than their taller stablemates.

“We’ll have more information out closer to the event,” Mr Cook says, “But if anyone wants to be involved – riders or riding clubs, companies hoping that supporting us will put them in front of a family West coast audience, or just spectators wanting more info, they should get in touch via facebook, or by contacting me, on Bob@cll.net.nz.”