Cooks Gardens opened to the public as a sporting facility in 1896 and since then has been the site of a number of historical occasions. 

 

April 1920

The Prince of Wales, who later reigned briefly as Edward VIII, visited Whanganui for one day on his 1920 tour of New Zealand. 

 

1927

The Duke and Duchess of York visited Whanganui. It was the largest crowd ever seen in Whanganui at the time. 

 

January 1962 

Tens of thousands of spectators flooded the grounds to witness athlete Peter Snell break the world record for the mile. He ran the mile in a time of 3 minutes 54 seconds on a grass track. At the time, this took one-tenth of a second off Herb Elliot's world record.

Since then Cooks Gardens has emerged on to the international stage, and the four minute mile has been broken 69 times at Cooks Gardens by athletes from various countries around the world. 

 

1996

There was a multi-million dollar upgrade of the venue. An all-weather synthetic 400m athletics track was installed, as well as the first wooden cycling velodrome and a new grandstand. 

 

2004 

Redevelopment of the Cooks Gardens was completed in 2004 with the construction of two further grandstands, 4 sports changing rooms, facilities for officials, a medical room and public toilets. 

 

January 2022 

Cooks Gardens was awarded a World Athletics Heritage Plaque by World Athletics (the sport's governing body).

This is awarded for an outstanding contributition to the worldwide history and development of the sport of track and field atheltics and of out of stadia athletics disciplines such as cross-country, mountain, road, trail and ultra running, and race walking.