My Year of the Racehorse Read Free Page A

still back out, I reminded myself.
    I was like that—cautious in my irresponsibility, astutely unwise, committed to keeping my options open.
    â€œDON’T GO BEING all disappointed,” Randi says, the ever-present cigarette hanging out of her mouth as Mocha Time is put in the gate. She’s already warned me that Blackie won’t be as sharp as the others, who have all competed since the season began three weeks ago. “She’s as good as any of the other horses, but they have a fitness edge.”
    We settle into a spot with Nick, a jockey’s agent and licensed trainer, by the top of the stretch as post time approaches. In his forties, Nick is solidly built, has curly, greying hair and a half-obscured British accent. He helps out with Randi’s horses, takes care of a lot of her on-track business, including the paperwork for some of her horses.
    â€œI’ll be happy if she finishes in the middle of the pack,” says Nick.
    The six-and-a-half-furlong race (a furlong is an eighth of a mile), for fillies and mares three years and up (fillies become mares when they turn four), lasts under a minute and a half on Hastings’s dirt track. The horses are loaded into green iron gates located on a chute that leads into the top of the front stretch. The gates open and they fire out, thousand-pound animals running at thirty-five miles an hour. Starting seven places from the rail, Blackie is vying for fourth with a couple of horses at the start of the first turn, running on the outside edge of the frontrunners, and fading further into the pack as the race straightens out to the backstretch—the far straightaway. “Oh, this is not good,” says Nick. “She’s hung out bad.”
    â€œThat’s no good?” I say, echoing Nick like a dweebish toddler.
    Randi shakes her head. “When you get hung out wide, you lose too much ground.” Translation: a horse that manages to hug the inside fence runs a shorter race than one that runs outside.
    As we begin to lose sight of the horses behind the tote board, Blackie gathers speed and falls just behind the two favourites, often referred to as “the chalk,” of the race. Even in her red saddle cloth, she’s hard to pick out in the distance.
    â€œTHEY’RE MIDWAY THROUGH THE BACKSTRETCH NOW AND PEACEBETHEJOURNEY COMES WITH THE LEAD,” the announcer, Dan Jukich, who calls the race the way you’d imagine an auctioneer would call a hockey game, barks on the PA, the cadences of his voice galloping along with the horses, “LADY VITESSE RIGHT THERE ON HER OUTSIDE, MOCHA TIME WITH ONLY A THREE-QUARTERS DISADVANTAGE IN THIRD.”
    â€œShe’s running okay, but she’s going to tire out,” Nick says, snorting ruefully. As he leans back to catch the horses as they return to view, it seems like his prediction will bear out. At the top of the front stretch, Blackie is overtaken by an eight-year-old mare named Sultry Eyes. “She’s going to split the field, just like I thought.”
    â€œCome on!” I say, testing out a yelp cautiously, the way I would a taser or a curling iron.
    All around us, people are bouncing around with their tickets; as horses are picked off, so are these bettors, who shoot their eyes away from the racing oval in disgust. The horses streak towards the finish line, and there’s little uncertainty that my bet is toast, but Blackie doesn’t fade as badly as Nick predicted. In fact, she manages to hang on, in a photo finish, for fourth—good enough for a $600 sliver of the purse. Of that, I get $60.
    Randi nods nonchalantly, as though she saw it coming. Like all the horsemen I later meet, she never lets on being fazed. “That wasn’t so bad,” she says, moving to her horse, hands in her hip pockets. “Like I was saying to you, it’s not easy for a horse to win. So many things have to work out right.”
    Nick hustles past her. Farther