Sideline Sid Sports correspondent & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

Tradition took center stage at Riccarton Park racecourse last Saturday, with the staging of the 147th Grand National steeplechase.

Hosted by the Canterbury Jockey Club, which has the oldest continuous existence of all the thoroughbred racing club in the country, the event is dated back to its formation following the Market Dinner at the Golden Fleece Hotel in November 1854.

Subsequently, the Governor was asked to set aside a public reserve area about six miles from the centre of Christchurch.

The newly formed club held its first meeting on what is now Riccarton racecourse in 1855.

Although Riccarton is the home of the Grand National Steeplechase, the Canterbury Jockey Club didn't establish the great race, with the then New Zealand Grand National Steeplechase Club establishing the race.

The first Grand National Steeplechase was run at Waimate in 1875 and various other Canterbury region venues, until Riccarton became home in 1888.

Last Saturday, hot favourite Tallyho Twinkletoes completed the final leg of a remarkable double, winning the New Zealand and Australian Grand National Hurdle and Steeplechases.

The Wanganui-trained horse has been a real money machine of for its connection, banking over 660k so far its career.

Drama and upsets have accompanied long held dreams over the intervening near century and a half of the race.

Champion jumper Brookby Song won the great race in 1948, with another legendary jumper in Loch Linnie winning the hundredth running of the race in 1974.

The Western Bay of Plenty has strong links to the Grand National, with Dusky Prince defeating the opposition in 1960 and 1961

The bible of New Zealand thoroughbred racing, Tapestry of Turf, tells us that Dusky Prince was a grand stayer and a safe jumper.

'A nine year old when he won his first National, he repeated the feat the following year. Dusky Prince was trained by jockey/trainer Neil Craig (on the Gate Pa track) for Jim Evans, who was a committeeman on the Bay of Plenty Racing Club for more than forty years.”

With the steady demise of jump racing in New Zealand in recent times, the long term future of the Grand National looks uncertain.

In other sporting news, Western Bay of Plenty rugby fans will have to travel to Rotorua to catch the BOPRU Baywide premier final.

Whakarewarewa would have been delighted after Tauranga Sports knocked out to qualifier Te Puna, with the Rotorua second seed beating Greerton Marist, to set up a classic Bay of Plenty intercity battle.