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

Delving deep into history can be like searching for solitary pieces of jigsaw in a thousand piece puzzle.

As small pieces are found and put together, events of the past emerge from the dusts of time to shed light on long forgotten accomplishments.

New Zealand amateur historians, received a real boost with the advent of the internet, and the National Library of New Zealand establishing Papers Past.

Papers Past, delivers digitised full-text New Zealand newspapers, magazines, journals, books and other formats, online.

The Papers Past homepage delivers a poignant message to all that use the site. "Welcome to all who are pursuing the spark of knowledge, carefully uplift this knowledge into the world of light, and use it wisely as a link from the past to the future."

What started out as a routine assignment for this week's sports blog, revealed an almost unbroken sequence of the staging of an iconic Mount Maunganui sporting event.

What is now called the Mount Maunganui King and Queen of the Mountain race started life as the "Race to the Summit of the Mountain" in 1945.

Long-time race organiser and local athletics legend, Malcolm Taylor, has chronicled much of the history of the race.

The Mount 5000 Club, was originally tasked with coordinating entertainment events for holiday makers and locals, over the Christmas and New Year period.

The first race started on the 27th December 1945, from the corner of Pacific Avenue and Maunganui Road, with the runners charging down Maunganui Road to the base of Mauao, then choosing their own way up to the summit and the return, to the finish in Coronation Park via Maunganui Road.

Thousands of spectators would line the Mount Maunganui main street, from race start to the climb up the mountain on race day, between Christmas and New Years Day.

A route change in 1997, now sees the runners start on the main beach opposite Moturiki Island, with the competitors required to stick to the formed tracks before racing back to the start/finish line.

It is interesting to note in Malcolm Taylor's reflections, that women weren't able to compete until as recently as 1985.

Malcolm Taylor revealed that Noel (Snow) Taylor of Hairini won the first Mountain race in a time of, 17 minutes, 35 seconds.

Hidden gems taken from the Papers Past, Bay of Plenty Times contributions in the 1940's, told that Noel Taylor won the first three runnings of the Mountain dash.

The Bay Times reported "Running a well judged race, Noel Taylor of Lower Hutt, won the (1948) annual mountain race at Mount Maunganui for the third successive time."

This was where some real confusion for the writer, set in, as the 1948 event should have been the fourth staging of the event. However a further online search, found a Bay Times article from September 1948 that provided the answer.

"The annual mountain race will this year be for amateur competitors. It is anticipated that many prominent visiting harriers will take part. Last year the carnival was postponed on account of the infant paralysis (polio) outbreak."

Papers Past had revealed that the race wasn't run in 1947. I can see that I made a basic error of interpreting three successive wins as three consecutive victories.

The moral of this story is that amateur historian's should take their time to consider the wider picture and not jump to conclusions from a single article.

This year's King and Queen of the Mountain will be held on the (now) traditional date of Boxing Day (26th December 2022).