[1] Since then Cooks Gardens has been the venue of a number of the world's historic sporting occasions.

One of these occasions was on 27 January 1962 when tens of thousands of spectators crammed into Cooks Gardens to witness athlete Peter Snell break the world record for the mile.

[2] Since then, the four minute mile has been broken 63 times at Cooks Gardens by 41 athletes from various countries around the world.

This included an all-weather synthetic 400m athletic track, the first wooden cycling velodrome in New Zealand, and a new grandstand.

Central Districts used it as one of their home grounds from the 1950s to the 1990s, staging 17 first-class and eight List A matches there.