The gates broke. Hooves pounded the dirt. Six jockeys bounced on the backs of six horses, their colors mixing and overlapping, an argyle rainbow of green and yellow, black and purple, blue and red. For 15.78 seconds the crowd was jumping and hollering.
Then Sola Gratia, a quick beast, crossed the finish line of the first race, a 300-yard sprint. A few in the crowd continued jumping and smiling and turned to cash in their winnings. The rest of the spectators looked down at their race guides, choosing a horse for the next race, which would begin in half an hour.
This is a typical Sunday afternoon at Portland Meadows, which opened its doors for live racing this month. The scene is cyclical. Like lapping waves, the crowd flows from the betting stations to the track’s sidelines and then back again, each time studying the horse guide and reading training stats and win records, or just picking horses based on lucky numbers and fun names.
The bets can be easy to place: win, place or show, for instance, which means the horse will either win the race, place in the top two spots, or show in the top three. But from there, the bets get more complex.
The exacta, trifecta or superfecta are the first two, three or four horses in the correct order for a given race. The daily double, pick three or pick four are the winners of two, three or four consecutive races.
The bets can be small or large or not placed at all. Some people just like to spend the day outside watching the horses run. They’re impressive animals, highly trained athletes. When they stand in the winner’s circle, garlands around their necks, you get the sense that they know why they’re running and know that they’re competing.