Race Track Diary, Entry Number Ten

Century Mile Racetrack (September 13, 2025)

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.

10 – Century Mile 6 (September 13, 2025)
- This is the seventh trip to the “real” racetrack, though once again, we didn’t actually leave the off-track betting area of the casino, and go to the outside world, where the real horses would be running. So it goes – eventually I am sure that we will cross that threshold.
- The off-track betting area was not too busy early on, but it did become more so as the late afternoon and early evening came upon us. The parking lot was much busier when we left than when we arrived (early afternoon) as well.
- It is quite possible that the busyness of the day was related to the fact that this was the last day of the local thoroughbred meet. That was reinforced in my mind by overhearing some of the chat of bettors nearby our base of operations, later in the day. It seemed likely that some of them were probably personally connected to the horses that were running that day, perhaps owners, trainers, horse handlers or people related to others in these roles.
- After this day, it would be harness races only (as well as off-track betting, of course). My brother Craig probably won’t mind that too much, as he has a strange love/hate affair with what he terms “the bucket-pullers”.
- On this occasion Tyler, one of Craig’s sons accompanied us to the track. He is an occasional horse-race and/or casino participant, though his real passion (so to speak) is sports, especially his beloved Raiders and Blue Jays. For hockey I suppose it must be the Oilers, but at this time of year football and baseball reign supreme.
- He started a new job recently, where the employers have routinely gifted him with jerseys and similar sports paraphernalia related to the Raiders. He says they have told him that the atmosphere around the place has improved since he began, so I guess they want to keep him around (without having to give him a raise, no doubt). He is an easy guy to get along with, so I sort-of understand it. Anyway, good for him.
- The races at Fairmount Park didn’t show up on the big screens until the fourth race. That was the track that I bought a program for, so there was no betting for me until then. I prefer to follow just one track and attempt to handicap that set of races. I find that following too many races spreads one’s mental energies too thinly, which makes handicapping difficult.
- These days I appear to be in the minority, as far as that goes. Craig and Tyler weren’t paying too much attention to the numbers, more or less going on intuition or just blind luck. That said, today they did better than I did.
- I came within a neck of picking up a pretty decent exacta, when my second place horse got nipped at the wire. I also missed another exacta, when my horses came in second-third, with my third-rated pick beating them both. However, that didn’t happen at the wire, so it wasn’t as close as the first contest, thus not as exciting (or disappointing, if you look at it that way).
- Craig and Tyler focused for a while on a TV screen near our table, which featured races from Jamaica. It was somewhat strange, as the prices were being shown in Jamaican dollars, which are valued at a small fraction of U.S. or Canadian dollars. Thus, the purse on one of the races was 1.2 million dollars and the payoff for exotic bets (e.g. triactors) were typically in the tens of thousands. It took a few minutes to figure out the currency confusion, but it was amusing until then.
- It turned out that Craig hit a few of these races, as well as some bucket-pullers at the Woodbine track in Toronto. I should note that he lived in southern Ontario for a few years, so was quite familiar with Woodbine from personal visits. I had also been there a few times – it’s a nice big facility, as I recall.
- Tyler had no luck with the horses, but he disappeared for a few minutes near the end of our visit and came back with an 80 dollar win from the video lottery machines. Or are they slot machines? These days I can’t make out the difference, though to be honest, I have never been attracted to either.
- Some internet sources claim that VLTs are "tighter" (lower payoffs) than slot machines, but that my only apply to places like Las Vegas. Either way, they are negative expectation games, so in the long run, you lose either way. Horse-racing uses pari-mutual payoffs (essentially a contest among the pool of betters), though the track’s takeout is high enough that these comparisons are a moot point. I keep my bets modest and play for the comanionship and intellectual challenge.
- I noted to Tyler that it was nice to hit a win at the slots, but it would have been so much nicer to make that on horses – more bragging rights. He laughed and said “I suppose so”, but he was probably just humouring me.
- At about the same time, the Blue Jays knocked in a few runs in the ninth inning to win their baseball game (they were in a pennant race), so that lifted Tyler’s spirits as well.
- At any rate, my winning streak ended, but someone else’s had just begun.
- My off-day was made up for by Craig’s and Tyler’s good fortune. That made the outing ok in my books. Besides, True Handicapping will eventually prevail (ha, ha).
- I should note that I had done some horseracing simulations in a spreadsheet, then in the statistical programming language R, to see just how often a long streak would show up by pure random chance (also called luck). I will add the results to this narrative a little later.
  For anyone who is curious, this is how my handicapping has gone so far during this project (the statements are from the previous blogs). I think I will go for about 25 entries, to see how I do.
  1 - Won a few bets, came out positive, I think. At least one fair-size win.
  
  2 - No wins for us.
  
  3 - Came out ahead.
  
  4 - I broke even.
  
  5 - not a winning day,
  
  6 - I left that track with more money than I arrived with.
  
  7 - I came out of the day ahead.
  
  8 - Well over the top for the day.
  
  9 - Exactor that paid enough to cover the rest of my bets for the rest of the day, with some to spare.
  
  10 - my winning streak ended.

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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 a science fiction story that I wrote. It’s not about horses, but people seem to have found it interesting, going by reviews and/or ratings on Amazon (note that there actually is a novel version now):

The Magnetic Anomaly: A ScienceFiction Story

“A geophysical crew went into the Canadian north. There were some regrettable accidents among a few ex-military who had become geophysical contractors after their service in the forces. A young man and young woman went temporarily mad from the stress of seeing that. They imagined things, terrible things. But both are known to have vivid imaginations; we have childhood records to verify that. It was all very sad. That’s the official story.”

You can purchase it for all of 99 cents. Alternatively, keep your eyes open for a free promotions, which occur periodically. Or, get it with Kindle Unlimited.

Amazon:

U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0176H22B4

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0176H22B4

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0176H22B4

France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0176H22B4

Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0176H22B4

Netherlands: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0176H22B4

Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0176H22B4

Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0176H22B4

Mexico: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B0176H22B4

Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0176H22B4

Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0176H22B4