THE annual St Pat’s race day is much, much more than that – just ask club president Andrew Schmidt.
The Cup might be run on Saturday, but the greyhounds will be on the track the day after.
To make entries for the big day even more attractive, Mr Schmidt said the club was adding a trainer incentive – a $200 starter rebate regardless of where your horse finishes.
So long as it gets to the track, it gets some money in the bank.
But if participation, not just spectating, is more your thing, on the Friday before the cup you can join the two-person medley Ambrose event at the Broken Hill Golf and Country Club for its 11.30am shotgun start.
Or try your hand in the $1000 foot race (on race day) where speed on two feet will sort out the stars and the also-rans.
And then there is the legendary ‘recovery day’ at Peter and Patsy Price’s Silverton Hotel – which this year will be having its golden anniversary to celebrate 50 years of getting people through the Silver City’s weekend of weekends.
Whether it sends them home in better condition than when they arrived remains to be seen. However, there will be shuttle buses available to get people to and from the pub.
Mr Schmidt said while the recovery day celebrates its 50th anniversary, 2025 will be the 60th for the St Pat’s meeting itself.
“St Pat’s in the autumn and the Mundi Mundi Bash at the end of winter are the big bookends for Broken Hill – they are massive events and mean so much for the local economy,” he said.
“The crowds are huge – Mundi Mundi is looking at 10,000 this year – and people love coming to these events as much as we love putting them on.
“St Pat’s Day kickstarts our tourism year here, it’s just such an enormous part of the local calendar and such a huge occasion – further backed up in 2025 with Broken Hill art gallery staging an exhibition of many of the paintings used by our club for our annual poster – all by local artists from Pro Hart to Jack Absalom ”
Mind you, Broken Hill is a small city which has always punched well above its weight and is pretty well recognised these days on the world stage.
Where it has been a star in more than 60 movies – from Mad Max to Mission Impossible – giving it an enviable profile in the minds of those tourists looking to find that little extra something in a destination.
Mr Schmidt also smiles about some of the memories of St Pat’s early days.
Such as the Miss Teen quest the club staged in 1969.
“The then local paper, the Barrier Miner Truth, didn’t have a photographer so on the Monday the winner had to take herself into the paper’s office and get someone there to take a picture to record the event,” he laughed.
Mr Schmidt said he doubted local trainer John Toms knew what he was creating when he suggested the Broken Hill St Patrick’s Race Club be founded to boost the local horse industry and at the same time raise funds to support local Catholic schools.
He said in keeping with the ongoing tradition, Toms was playing a game of golf with Catholic administrator Father Pat Murray, and suggested using volunteer labour from within the Catholic School system to help establish an annual race meeting.
One which would incorporate prize money to pull more trainers and horses, and would become something of a social event – which got a boost soon after with the addition of the first fashions on the field.
“That inspiration from the fairway saw Broken Hill become host to the most widely publicised and richest ‘one day country race meeting’ in Australia for some time,” Mr Schmidt said.
“Today the phenomenal success of the St Pat’s race meeting continues unabated, and its beneficiaries extend well beyond the Catholic schools.”
