Race Day

Today was our 16th anniversary and to celebrate it, Jim took me to the horse races. We left in the morning (it was a dreary, rainy day), had breakfast on the way to Toronto, and then went to Woodbine (the race track). One of Jim's fuel customers is a track vet there and he gave us the inside tour of the track and horse barns. It was REALLY neat and we got to see some of the races very close up because we were with the vet. Here are some pictures of the day which turned out to be gorgeous weather. The whole place was what I envisioned Churchill Downs or other famous horse racing tracks to be like. All the races were being televised and we were sitting just beside the winner's circle (and thus the interviews with the winning jockeys) so we may have gotten our 15 minutes of fame and didn't even know it! The photos go in order: above is the horses being loaded into the starting gates; which is movable because each race was a different distance.

This is a picture of them just out of the starting gates. They are super fast out of those gates and I don't know how those jockeys stay on because their stirrups certainly don't help them being up so high. Actually, one of the jockeys fell off in the first race because her horse got clipped by another one and stumbled. Thankfully, she did not get hurt as the horse behind/beside her jumped over her.

This is a picture of one of the races just finishing. They actually have 3 types of tracks side by side. One is the dirt track which is for the Standardbred racing. The second track is the turf track which looks like dirt, but is mostly synthetic material including rubber, fiberglass, and sand. It is very cushiony (not sure if that is a word) and isn't affected by the rain. The third track is the grass track and is very nice; the photo above is on the grass and we were so close you could feel the ground rumble and hear the horses breathing as they flew by. If you look in the background of the photo, you can see the HUGE screen on the infield showing the race and stats/info on all the horses. They do replays, list betting odds, etc on that screen and it is good to have when the horses are on the opposite side of the track where it is hard to see them.

Here is a picture of one of the race winners in the winner's circle. It was really neat to be able to experience the racing live and up close instead of just on television. There is also an indoor area called "The Paddock" where you can see the horses getting saddled and the jockeys mounting up before they go on to the track. This is definitely where I would like to take any of you horse fans (and non-horse fans if you want!) to when you come visit next time. (They don't race in the winter, though!)

We ended our day with supper at Boston Pizza and had a great meal. (It was the tropical chicken pizza and was the best I have eaten there) A fantastic day!