This afternoon our friends Randy and Sandi invited us to the barns at Fraser Downs Racetrack to meet their race horses. Fraser Downs is a harness racing facility in the suburb of Cloverdale where I worked for years.
Randy is a respected horseman. He is semi-retired and has only two horses in his stable. Henderson (called Harry) and Jemma, racing name Jemma Jets.
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| The race is on. |
I had worked with Sandi at Royal Bank for many years. A few years ago Sandi became a groom in order to have the right to hang out in the barns.
Harness racing is putting the cart behind the horse and the horse's gait is called pacing. The horses never lose their stride. In fact they are eliminated if they do.
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| The carts |
Most of the drivers, owners and grooms dealt at the bank Sandi and I worked at so I knew quite a few of the people in the barns today.
At the end of the day, I checked the results for the tenth race. Randy's horse, Jemma's Jet placed first in her race. She was the favourite so the payout wasn't much. I don't know how it works for the horse owner, but this morning Randy said that Jemma had won $32,000 in the last six weeks. Not bad for a horse that was free.
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| Sandi, Henderson and Randy |
Both Jemma and Henderson are very friendly well behaved horses. You do have to be careful in the barns though. Many horses are not. Henderson loves candy particularly licorice.
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| And they're off. |
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| Driver, cart and horse posing for us |
3 comments:
I loved watching those harness horses at that the fairgrounds we stayed at. They are so beautiful and their stride is gorgeous.
We've been to horse races but never harness racing. I'd like to see that sometime. Maybe I'll check the events listing at Canterbury Downs when we are in Minnesota this summer. Of course, we won't get to go to the barns. :)
We are not horse people but these horses are beautiful.
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