Horse racing arrived in Minahasa during the Dutch colonial period, but the Minahasan people made it their own. When Hein Victor Worang served as Governor of North Sulawesi in the late 1960s, he inaugurated racing venues across the province between 1967 and 1968, including tracks at Airmadidi, Manado, Tountimomor, and Tompaso. These early courses were modest -- tracks measuring between 600 and 800 meters that hosted local races drawing horses from around North Sulawesi. In 1984, the Tompaso track was expanded to its current 1,600-meter length, and approximately one hectare of land west of the racecourse was acquired for a pilot horse-breeding project. The investment signaled what the community already knew: this was no passing hobby.

The racecourse's proudest chapter came in 1997, when it hosted the second series of the Kejurnas Kuda Pacu -- Indonesia's National Horse Racing Championship, organized by PORDASI, the national equestrian federation. North Sulawesi's contingent won the event, securing a third consecutive national title and cementing the province's reputation as a horse racing power. The Kejurnas returned to Tompaso in 2007, 2014, and again in 2018. Between championship meets, the track has served purposes its builders might not have imagined: traditional bull racing, community gatherings, and even an Easter celebration organized by the Christian Evangelical Church in Minahasa. In a region where Christianity is the dominant faith, a racecourse doubling as a worship ground captures something essential about Minahasan life -- pragmatic, communal, and unafraid to mix the sacred with the secular.

The physical track -- 18 meters wide, running right-handed across 24 hectares of volcanic soil -- has undergone multiple renovations. A major overhaul in 2014, funded with approximately 1 billion rupiah by the North Sulawesi Provincial Government through its Youth and Sports Agency, prepared the surface for that year's Kejurnas series. A more recent renovation in 2025, budgeted at around 2.85 billion rupiah, drew public scrutiny when reports emerged that the contractor had allegedly used construction materials that did not meet technical specifications for the track surface. The controversy is a reminder that even in a place where horse racing is cultural heritage, money and accountability collide in familiar ways.

What makes Tompaso unusual is not the racecourse itself but what surrounds it. This is not a facility transplanted into an urban entertainment district. It sits in the Minahasan highlands, where volcanic soil grows exceptional produce and the air is cooler than the coastal cities below. The five villages of West Tompaso District maintain a horse culture that predates the track by generations. Children grow up around horses. Jockeys are local. The breeding knowledge is passed within families, not imported from international racing circuits. In an era when horse racing worldwide trends toward corporate ownership and simulcast betting, Maesa Tompaso remains rooted in something older and more personal -- a community that races because it always has, on dirt that shakes with each passing stride.