My Year of the Racehorse Read Free Page B

on, he runs onto the track and takes Blackie’s leads from the jockey, Keveh Nicholls. I watch them as they disappear into the barn.
    Flashing my owner’s licence at the security desk, I step through a door by the paddock off the edge of the track, down a long, concrete corridor, and slip into the stable area, a village of olive-grey, single-storey barns with corrugated tin roofs. Outside their shed row, Blackie is being held in place by Alex, an eighty-year-old hot walker who lives in Randi’s tack room. A hot walker’s job is to lead the horse around the area known as the “backside” to cool her off. While Alex struggles to keep her in place, Nick hoses her down.
    The horse is excited, like a schoolyard brawler who’s socked his first glee club member of the new school year. She shuffles sideways on the paved road as she’s being hosed. Nick moves roughly in step with her. I back away from this terrifying animal until I’m at a shouting distance.
    â€œWe need to calm her down,” Nick tells me, “from all the adrenalin.”
    â€œIs she happy about how she did?” I ask.
    â€œShe ran wide, which means if she ran on the rail she’d be ahead by six lengths,” says Alex, offering his gummy smile. Alex is not much more than five feet tall and is wearing, as he always does, long johns under shorts, taped-up workboots, a plaid shirt, and a fading Belmont Stakes baseball cap. Prior to residing at the track, he lived in a trailer at the junkyard.
    â€œShe was not discouraged,” Nick explains. “You know what I mean?”
    â€œWhat does that mean?” I ask him.
    â€œThat there’s hope.”
    Hope, I will later learn, is a kind of currency at the track; people always seem happy to carry it in their pocket. Everyone but me. I’m already living on hope. Is it too greedy of me to ask for more—to have, and not hope?

2 Backside
    HEADS OUT OF their stalls, a row of horses eye me down like nosy neighbours as I approach them in Barn A. It’s a pleasant surprise that the backside (or backstretch—the same name for the far lane in the racing oval) area doesn’t have the piercing outhouse odours of a petting zoo on a summer day, but gives off earthier, more wholesome scents: hay, sweat, and liniment oil. After my underwhelmed reaction to the first race, I figure I should redouble my efforts to fall in love with racing. To that end, I’ve come to Randi’s shed row, with her permission, to see how horsemen really behave.
    Each barn is made up of a couple of shed rows, which are occupied by different stables, each of those headed by a different trainer and its own private fiefdom. Although the number is always in flux, Randi currently trains about eight horses, three of which she co-owns. Collectively, these horses, at any given moment, nurse a barrage of ailments—knees with chips in them, sore ankles and hooves—that are related to the strain of horse-racing and the fact the animals are bred for speed, not sturdiness.
    By comparison, some of the bigger trainers at Hastings, the ones at the top of the standings in the programs, have upwards of fifty horses. The larger, more impersonal stables operate like small contracting outfits, with men and women in plaid shirts trudging single-mindedly, not wanting to make eye contact, lest I distract them with my artful badinage. As they lead sweaty horses, the hot walkers yell “centre” or “coming through the middle” as they pass through the corridor that bisects the barn. Alex strides by, singing to Sylvester as they loop the barn.
    â€œI can’t talk to you right now,” Randi says on my first visit at eight in the morning, holding a clump of dung on her pitchfork as she stands in an empty stall. “No questions.”
    â€œI’m not asking any questions.”
    â€œYou’re always asking questions.”
    Feeling unloved, I leave Barn A for the