Events

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Cloncurry Sport of Kings Race Day (Horse Racing)

Cloncurry Sport of Kings Race Day

The Sport of Kings Race Day is an ideal opportunity for you to experience the real Outback. This must-see event at the Cloncurry Turf Club consists of 5 races.  The day is jam-packed with spectacular horse racing and live entertainment.  Punters will love the odds of this five race horse meet, with city and bush trainers heading to Cloncurry for a share in the race being the Sport of Kings Maiden worth $10000 to the winning horse connections.

The Sport of Kings Race Day is a feature event of the town’s calendar where Cloncurry heads to the track for the biggest day of the year. The event attracts people from all over the state and the town bursts at the seams with a few hundred people attending the event. 

Cloncurry races are a great day, with many social activities and excellent catering. However, horses, too, are important and trainers bring them great distances.

Cloncurry Race Club has been established since the early 1890’s, and is strongly supported by the local racing fraternity and regional horse trainers. The Race Day caters for the whole family with children’s playgrounds on course, lolly drops & entertainment for the kids. Ladies get involved by entering our Fashions of the Field competition by frocking up on the day.

General information:

There are full bar and catering facilities available and bookmakers for local and southern races. Local charities benefit from races as we offer the catering to a local organisation and another organisation supervise the gate entries for a donation in return so all in all the whole town benefits from the races in Cloncurry.

Racing in the Cloncurry district dates back to the 1880s; a horse called “Grenadier” is recorded as winning the 1884 Cloncurry Cup. The horse was owned by the Magistrate of the time, Richard Uhr, and the cup is on display at the Mary Kathleen Memorial Museum. The Cloncurry racetrack in the early 1900s was a very grand place - ’Randwick of the North’, according to some older people in the town! There was a large grandstand with a stairway up the middle, a roof and a tea room underneath and lawns surroundings. This grandstand was blown down in 1940 by a freak storm. Part of the stand remains and a bar now stands where the tearoom once was (refreshments have certainly got stronger!).