Race Track Diary, Entry Number
Twenty-Six
26 – Billy Budd’s (March 14, 2026)
Introduction
This blog and some following blogs are sections from an informal diary of “visits to the race-track” at a particular time and place, by a person who has followed the races with varying levels of participation over a long period. These relate primarily to some visits to the track and/or off-track betting venues in the 2025 period and onward. They contain observations about the activity, both specific and general. Although these remarks are personal, they also reflect general cultural and historical trends, as they have impacted horse-racing, wagering and culture in general.
The setting is Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (population of about one million plus). However, I imagine that the observations would apply to many places in the world, as they are a reflection of how changing trends in technology, globalization and culture in general have affected this ancient and honourable activity of horse-racing.
For now, I will use what I call “polished point-form” for the narrative.
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26 – Billy Budd’s (Mar 14, 2026)
This was a Saturday visit, but a very special Saturday for us Math folks, known as PI Day. This, of course, is due to the date being represented as 3.14 (month 3, day 14), which is the commonly used approximation for the number pi, which we all know and love from our school days. (Note: I did a PI Day blog, that involves horse-racing, which I will list below).
Pi has quite a hold on people imaginations – in fact it falls under the category of being a ‘transcendental’ number, which sounds pretty awesome.
However, it was also the day after Friday the 13th (cue eerie music). So, there were contending superstitions at play.
Foreshadowing: some good luck, some bad luck, for me; some very bad luck for a couple of jockeys at Santa Anita.
It was a pretty good crowd at the racing section of Budd’s but not a full-house. That gave us some choice seats on the arc-shaped bench, with plenty of space to spread out programs, calculators and other assorted paraphernalia of the trade (for me anyway). That area has under-mount lighting as well, and has excellent sight-lines for the multiple screens.
As usual, the majority of the crowd were older fellows along with some of their wives (I assume).
There was a lot of reminiscing going on. One fellow talked quite a bit about jobs of the past, especially a summer job working on a ranch in the foothills of Alberta. He said it was beautiful country, and though the work was hard, he loved the job.
Others remembered the old days of the local racetrack, Northlands Park, fondly. Things usually seem better in retrospect. However, parking could be a pain as could public transit. There was an admission to get in, though it was free for the last 3 or 4 races. The food was of varied quality and the draft beer generally came in cheap plastic glasses. But it was nice to see the horses up close and feel the vibes a crowd during the race.
Later on, a smattering of younger fellows showed up. One fellow was very knowledgeable about the horses and horse-racing industry. A sort of insider, but I don’t think his betting was going any better than mine.
We were in time to catch the full card at Santa Anita as well as most of the harness races at Woodbine. Here’s how it went at Santa Anita:
The first race had a number of evenly matched horse, going by my numbers. I chose the #2 horse, who had slightly lower numbers but much better odds than the other contenders. It also showed a big odds drop from the morning line to race time, generally a favorable sign. It ran a good race, but got nicked at the end, finishing second.
The second race was much the same. My pick (#2 again) ran well early but eventually faded and came in fourth. The winner had a nice closing kick, though it didn’t pay much (under even money).
The third race was on turf, that funny course at Santa Anita that ends in a downhill slope. I don’t know what to make of that, so I skipped that race. Naturally the horse that my system liked (#1) took the race at a decent price, nearly 4 to 1.
The fourth race was pretty weird. My pick (#5) led for much of the race, though others caught up to it by the turn. Then the #4 horse rushed up from behind and tried to squeeze between my horse (which was on the rail) and a horse directly to its right. It seemed like a crazy and reckless move, as there simply wasn’t enough space to make it through.
Well, the laws of physics say that two objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time, so something had to give. That something was the jockey of my horse, who took a spill, landing on the padded rail and rolling off. He was lucky not to get trampled or seriously injured, which was shown by the fact that he quickly arose after the fall and ran off the track. Whenever this happens, I am amazed how the jockeys generally seem to escape relatively unscathed.
The one-mile race took 99 seconds, which works out to an average speed of about 36 mph or about 57 km/hour. I wouldn’t want to fall out of a car at that speed, let alone from a horse, or better yet, into a group of on-rushing horses. Though it has to be said that horses seem pretty good at avoiding stepping on people on the ground. My wife has told me the story of how, when she was a little girl, she fell off a wagon being pulled by a work-horse (she grew up on a farm), right under the wheel of the wagon. That horse, which was usually a rather cantankerous sort, stood stock-still until her father had time to jump down and rescue her.
Getting back to the races, at the time that the jockey fell, it looked to me as if the rider of the other horse pushed him, though that was probably just some sort of trick of perspective. He might just as well have been trying to avoid the collision. In any case, one wonders how things will go in the future, between these two jockeys.
With the rider gone, the horse ran its own race, as they will in these circumstances. In this case, it ran wide, just to get out of the way of the rest of them. Sometimes the riderless horse will actually run a pretty strategic race and win, which is always amusing to witness. Needless to say, though, the bet doesn’t pay out.
There was an inquiry in the race, with the result that the #4 horse, which had finished first, was put down to last place by the judges. Unfortunately, the track didn’t return money to the betters of the offended horse and rider, which seemed to me to be the right thing to do. Granted, I might be a bit biased, as I was one of the affected betters.
In the fifth race, I bet the #9, which my numbers really liked, and was going off at nice odds. Unfortunately is came in third, paying over six dollars to show.
For the sixth race, I decided to be silly and bet the low-priced favorite, just for the sake of cashing a ticket. Unfortunately it came in second, though it paid a laughable $2.20 on a $2 ticket, so not much was lost by missing that bet.
By the seventh, things were getting desperate for me. The #5 looked very good by my numbers and was going off at a good price, so I bet it to win. It looked like it did win, though there was a photo finish with the 7 horse. It took a long time before the result was declared. Unfortunately, the decision was that the 7 won by a nose-hair. You couldn’t make out the difference on the video – it could easily have been called a dead heat. The race report merely said it "got the nod", which perhaps signaled some doubt in the matter. So it goes.
In the eighth, #2 looked pretty good and was going off at a good price. I decided to throw a show ticket on it, and it proceeded to come in second, so I finally got a chance to cash a ticket. It paid about a bit better than even money to show, so I got back some of my money.
The ninth and last was a Maiden race, with most of the horses having no usable races by my lights (mostly just workouts). That being the case, I skipped the race. As it turned out, the horse that my system picked did win, at 5 to 1 odds.
It was the kind of day where you feel snake-bitten, as they say in hockey:
I skipped two races, which ‘my horse’ won. So, a couple of bad calls on my part. But, sometimes skipping a race works and sometimes it doesn’t.
In three races, I bet Win, and my horse came in second, including a heart-breaking photo finish (which I still think it won).
I bet Win in another race, where my horse came in third
I bet Show in one race, where my horse came in second (hurrah, a positive result).
And in one other race, I bet Win, then my horse’s jockey got bumped off of the horse and into the rail. Well, at least I wasn’t on the horse.
In summary, when I look at the day in retrospect, my picks were generally good, but luck went against me. It was like a hockey player hitting multiple goal posts in a game, having a goal disallowed over a technicality and ultimately having to settle for a single secondary assist. So it goes.
The harness races at Woodbine began running concurrently with the last thoroughbred races at Santa Anita, so the latter soon became our sole focus of interest. The bucket-pullers went somewhat better than had the thoroughbreds:
In the first race, I bet Win on the 6, which is usually a reliable post. The horse had good odds and decent times, compared to the rest of the field. However, it got a bad start and never got anywhere near the money.
The second race was similar, I bet Win the # 5 horse, which had nice odds, decent numbers and a favorable post. It did better than the first race, finishing 3rd. So, another loss.
Craig and I had a rolling Pick-3 going, and were alive to one of them, so I decided that would be sufficient for Race 3 and 4. That bet didn’t pan out. The 4th race ended up as 1-3-4, which is a permutation of 3-1-4, so I guess you could call that the PI Day race.
In the fifth race, I bet another #6 horse to Win and it did just that. At the time I made my bet (quite close to race-time) its odds were good (3 to 1), but my Win ticket only paid a little better than even money. These late-second odds drops are often very predictive of a win, but they are not always evident, as the screens don’t generally show the odds that close to race-time. Still, it was a win.
Another #6 horse won the sixth race. I didn’t bet that one either, as Craig and I had a rolling Pick-3 going again. That came in, though with a couple of favorites in the mix, it didn’t pay much above break-even.
I took a flyer on a long-shot in the seventh race, but it came nowhere near the money. We picked up an extremely laughable Pick-3 on that race, though it didn’t even pay back the investment, as it also featured a couple of short-priced horses.
In the eighth race, I took a shot on another #6 horse, which came in to third. It went off at 10 to 1, so I thought the show ticket would be respectable, but it was less than 1 to 2. That seemed very weird, but these pools are independent, so the usual rules-of-thumb to estimate place and show don’t always apply.
We left about that time, even though there were 4 races left to go. Craig was driving, so he must have been a bet tired by then. He doesn’t usually quit the buckets early.
So, I lost three bets and won two. However those two were not great payoffs, so they didn’t quite make up for the losses. We also picked up a couple of Pick-3 wins, but they were also short-priced. The picks were alright, but the odds were mysteriously low. Snake-bit again, I suppose.
Overall, it was one of those days when you pick the horses quite wisely, but racing luck and peculiar odds bring you down. Hopefully, that just means that some good luck is upcoming!
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And here are a couple of short books you might like.
A Dark Horse
In “A Dark Horse”, a gambler’s desire to hit a big win seems to lead him to make a Faustian bargain with a supernatural evil. Or is it all just a string of unnaturally good luck?
The story is just $0.99 U.S. (equivalent in other currencies) and about 8000 words. It is also available on Kindle Unlimited and is occasionally on free promotion.
U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
U.K.: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Netherlands: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Mexico: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Brazil: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01MDMY2BR
Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Here’s an interesting review from Goodreads
(BTW, the writer has never met the reviewer and was not even aware of the review until very recently – You can look up the review on Goodreads, if you like)
A Dark Horse
Every gambler is
bound to run out of luck eventually, right?
By far my
favourite type of horror is psychological horror. I was quite pleased
with how Mr. Olausen frightened his audience without spilling a
single drop of blood or so much as hinting at anything gory. He knew
exactly what hints to drop for us that made us deliciously dread the
next scene simply by throwing out hints about who or what the dark
horse might actually represent. This is the kind of stuff I love
getting scared by, especially as Halloween approaches.
It
would have been helpful to have more character development in this
short story. While I certainly wouldn’t expect to see as much time
spent on this as I would for a full-length novel, I did have trouble
connecting to the main characters due to how little I knew about them
and how much their personalities seemed to remain the same no matter
what happened to them. If not for this issue, I would have felt
comfortable choosing a much higher rating as the plot itself was well
done.
I must admit to not knowing much about gambling at
all, so I appreciated the brief explanations the narrator shared
about how placing bets works and why some people have so much trouble
walking away from a bet. While I will leave it up to experts on these
topics to say how accurate everything was, I did enjoy learning more
about the main character’s addiction and what he hoped to gain from
betting on just one more game or race. It gave me a stronger sense of
empathy for folks in his position.
A Dark Horse – A
Gothic Tale was a deliciously chilling story for the Halloween season
and beyond.
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And here is an account of a summer job on the railroad, during my undergraduate years.
One Summer Working on the Railroad
What follows is an account of a few weeks one long-ago summer, when I was 19 and was working for the Canadian National Railway (CNR) on a railroad construction gang, in the wilds of north-central British Columbia, Canada.
The journal is in the form of a letter, that was never sent. Decades later, I think it has an interesting historical resonance. At times I come off like a callow youth – I plead guilty as charged. I swore a lot more in those days than I do now, but in places the writing is surprisingly good, at least in my humble opinion. And the story has a compelling narrative arc.
There were a lot of interesting and dramatic events that occurred – a number of industrial accidents being the most serious. There were also some colorful characters on the crew, which resulted in some dramatic and at times amusing conflicts and altercations. I perhaps flatter myself by including myself in that number. Or perhaps I condemn myself – I’m not sure.
So, if you want to be reminded of one of those summer jobs that was kind of life-changing, read on. My story may just kick-start some memories of your own.
The memoir/journal is about 9,000 words, a length that can usually be read in an hour or so. It is priced at 99 cents U.S. (equivalent in other currencies) and is free on Kindle Unlimited. Periodically, it will be offered as a free promotion.
U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CN661P8Z
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CN661P8Z
Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CN661P8Z
Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0CN661P8Z
India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0CN661P8Z
Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0CN661P8Z
France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0CN661P8Z
Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0CN661P8Z
Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0CN661P8Z
Netherlands: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0CN661P8Z
Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0CN661P8Z
Brazil: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B0CN661P8Z
Mexico: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B0CN661P8Z
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