All Bets Are On At Playfair Race Course Opens First Season Of Winter Racing

Mother Nature finally smiled on Playfair Race Course on Friday.

Under clearing skies and temperatures in the upper 30s, horse racing returned to Spokane for the first time in more than a year.

The only season of winter racing in the 60-year history of Playfair resumes today and continues on weekends through March 23.

It will keep Matt St. Marie jumping.

St. Marie is the maintenance and operations supervisor who oversaw installation of Playfair’s new safety rail during Spokane’s snowiest December on record.

To interest the public in cold-weather racing, Inland Northwest horsemen have to live up to their pledge to provide competitive racing. They did it Friday, producing enough horses to fill seven quality races.

But their horses would still be stuck in their stalls if the inside safety rail mandated by the Jockeys’ Guild and the Washington Horse Racing Commission had not been completed.

The commission rescinded Playfair’s scheduled Dec. 6 starting date because of its concerns over a newly installed temporary rail.

That sent St. Marie and a work crew out to do the dirtiest work.

“It was cold and wet, 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said.

The work paid off last week when commissioners voted to approve the permanent rail.

The delayed opening of a track that had been dark since Nov. 27, 1995, was hailed by director of racing Ted Martin as a “minor miracle.”

But even warmer weather had a downside. Snow had been keeping some of the mess of winter out of sight.

“Now we’re seeing what’s lying there, what needs cleaning and painting,” St. Marie said. “Nothing has run in over a year here. We just got to teach everything to work again.”

Opening day didn’t go off without a glitch. Programs and Daily Racing Forms were sold out. Television reception of the first race at Emerald Downs in Auburn - the first step in the state’s initial experiment with dual-card satellite wagering - didn’t come up in Spokane until shortly before the first race.

Spokane horseplayers bet on races at both tracks. The full card at the Auburn track is on TV.

Opening-day numbers indicate fans mostly came to watch rather than wager.

The handle - the money wagered at the track - was lower than anticipated, but no previous season had opened on a Friday afternoon in the dead of winter.

Horseplayers at Playfair wagered $46,036 on seven local races. With statewide off-track betting, the count was $148,082, including $66,126 wagered on Spokane’s races at Emerald Downs.

“It’ll be nice if they can hang on until they get a summer season next August,” said Steve Quaid of Spokane. “There are a lot of people out here today. I’ll be here tomorrow for kids day.”

Veteran owner-trainer Val Garza won the first race with a 6-year-old mare named Whirl With Me.

“I can’t explain the feeling,” he said. “Words can’t explain it. We waited an awful long time for this to happen.”

Spokane trainer Fred Hepton had planned to run horses at Turf Paradise in Phoenix but decided to support the hometown program.

“The OPHRN guys kept encouraging us to hang in there,” Hepton said of the leaders of the Organization to Preserve Horse Racing in the Northwest, the horsemen’s bargaining unit. “Jay Healy and Mike Odom to name two. They had so many things go against them, but they didn’t give up.”

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