The ThunderBlogs

The third race began with the smell of cigarette smoke and the earthy grass aroma of horse shit hanging in the damp night air. The bell sounded, and the announcer’s voice echoed down from the ceiling of the vaulted grandstand, hopelessly unintelligible at the rail. The five ponies pounded ahead, 20 hooves a muffled snare roll on the loamy track, sending mud erupting. Then they were past and out of sight.

Anyone watching a race from ground level at Hastings Racecourse can track the horses until they make the left turn, which at Hastings puts them on a northward course, toward the Burrard Inlet and the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge. Looming over the scoreboard – itself still lit, in classic fashion, with individual bulbs, like the border of a marquee – is the waterside grain elevator at the Cascadia Terminal, one of the 28 marine terminals operated by Port Metro Vancouver. The Viterra logo its side is a clue that the agriculture corporation that runs Canada’s largest grain network handles the imports and exports from this particular terminal.

Within a tight radius, Canadian oats meet the world and turn into purse-winning six-furlong runs. Cranelike grain-moving equipment cantilevered in the backdrop as the horses raced out of sight on the back of the track. As with so many parts of Vancouver, aspects of one of its main economic engines hung in plain sight but utterly out of mind.

With the race afoot, track denizens turned their attention from their programs and onion rings to stand on benches and peer, tip-toed, over the rail. Down from the ceiling blared the announcer’s gibberish about who was moving, who was leading, who was fading. A knot of sweat and silks thundered across the finish. “You were close,” someone told a companion, but no one could know for sure as the PHOTO FINISH sign lit in red neon on the scoreboard.

It was Woombroom Express for the win, paying $8.70 on a $2 bet. Slew’s Boy and Soldiers Return followed. From the stands, high up but well within earshot of the hoi polloi, came the unmistakable pop of a cork from a bottle, and a jubilant cry rose just behind.