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Behind The Scenes At Your Local Harness Track

© Kimberly Rinker

Racing Standardbred horses is a fun and exciting way to earn a living. Working with the horses day-in and day-out, and being invovled with the daily routines o fthe race track allows one the opportunity to learn from a large pool of individuals from all walks of life.

First of all, the racing secretary puts out a condition sheet which gives a schedule of upcoming races and the conditions of those races. It is then the trainer's responsibility to place his or her horses in the races in which they feel their equines will be the most competitive.

The racing office provides entry slips and entry boxes for this purpose and there is a specific time period which allows trainers to enter their horses to race, and a specific time at which the entry box closes.

A member of the racing office staff will then type up the entries on what is called, in racing jargon, "the overnight sheet." The following night, "racing proofs" will be made available to the racing office, the program department and the publicity staff, so that eah will be able to check for eligibility and possible stories for the track program and/or the media.

For those horsemen racing a pacer or trotter, there are several policies which must be adhered to at most tracks. First, all horses must be in the race paddock at a prescribed time in order to race. Normally, except in the case of stake events, the allotted time is two hours prior to post time for a specific race. The horses deemed bleeders, which race on the state-administered diuretic medication "lasix," also have an appointed time to receive thier lasix, usually four hours prior to the their post time.

As an example, let us say you have a horse racing in the first race at Balmoral Park (located in the Chicago suburb of Crete, Illinois) on a Sunday evening. The horse is a lasix horse. So your regular detention time is two hours prior to the first race on Sunday, which is 6:30 p.m. Since the horse is a lasix horse, the time that the horse would receive the lasix form the state veterinarian is two hours prior to detention time, approximnately 2:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Since Balmoral has a 12-race detention paddock, the horse will receive his lasix and stay in the paddock until after he races.

Once in the detention paddock, the caretaker/groom or trainer will be handed a warm-up numbered pad to be placed on the horse's back. There is a crew of people who work in the paddock that take care of, clean and distribute these racing pads and the warm-up pads, which are various colors, so that the gamblers can know which horses coordinate to their specific races.