Father's Day at Hastings · 20.06.10

Despite being a long-term tenant of the Pacific National Exhibition grounds at Hastings Park, Hastings Racecourse tends to get the short end of the stick regarding scheduling when other big-name events are held there. Case in point: the B.C. Lions football team has scheduled several games at Empire Fields that conflict with regular race days — including today. As a result, Hastings was forced to reschedule first post-time today from 1:30pm to 10am.

In an effort to maintain on-site attendance levels, the track scheduled a special Father’s Day race card, complete with an 8:30am free pancake breakfast, a $100,000 golf hole-in-one contest between races, and appearances by B.C. Lions alumni and the “Felions” cheerleading squad.

Yer ‘Umble Correspondent was one of those fatherly-types who went to Hastings today with his family. On-track attendance was fairly sparse, especially for the first couple of races. However, more people, including a fair number of family groups featuring daddies and kiddies, showed up over the course of the day. The weather remained unseasonably cool, but the projected rain held off. Various events conspired to prevent me from handicapping more than a couple of races properly, so the family decided to simply wing it and pick horses for fun. I was able to share some of my limited handicapping knowledge with our home-stay student, and Lena did well to pick two winners. Also, we were fortunate enough to be invited into one of the winners’ circle ceremonies.

Meanwhile, for one of the races I was able to analyze, the featured 7th, I picked the top two finishers, Lowther Street and Senor Rojo — and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t have enough confidence to put them in an exacta. Lowther Street is another recent Swift Thoroughbreds acquisition who had previously raced well in New York — he is so heavily-muscled that he looked like a quarter horse in the post parade. However, he had to work harder than most observers expected to beat Senor Rojo.

Overall, as with most days, there aren’t many better ways to spend a Father’s Day than at the track — regardless how much money you win (or lose).

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What do you think?

  1. Senor Rojo tries each and every time, which, being a Dave Forster trainee, doesn’t surprise me. GOOD honest animal.

    — Dr. T. Yatcak · Jun 21, 01:42 PM · #

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