Venerable Hastings track ready to host return of horse racing
A mid-February cold snap dealt Hastings Racecourse a last-minute scramble to stage a full opening weekend of horse racing at the venerable park, but general manager Darren MacDonald said they’ll managed to do it just the same.
“We had a little stretch (in February) where we had to close the track for eight days,” MacDonald said, which put the training schedules for horses behind. “We managed to get two days of racing for this weekend, (though) we’re a little short on the number of horses ready to go.”
That means racing will kick off Saturday at 1:50 p.m. with 52 race days on the 2018 calendar, and hopes that some new special events will attract new, younger audiences to the track.
For the moment, MacDonald’s challenges included finishing repairing and painting facilities that have weathered over the winter and rounding out hiring more than 200 seasonal, part-time staff to handle the summer crowds.
“I’m anticipating a pretty good season,” MacDonald said. “After the struggles the industry had over the early 2000s, we’ve kind of stabilized.”
In that, MacDonald pointed to the ongoing challenge of maintaining stability in a business that has seen its attendance, revenue and ranks of breeders decline in the face of changing demographics and increasing competition for gambling as entertainment.
Hastings saw 50 race days in 2017, a season hampered by similar bad winter weather and a late start, down from 69 race days in 2011. And racing at Hastings and the Elements harness-racing track in Surrey brought in a combined $7.4 million in revenue in 2017, compared with $14.6 million in 2011, according to Great Canadian Casinos, parent company of both facilities.
“The business, it’s tough everywhere,” said Grant Watson, president of B.C.’s division of the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society. “It’s no secret. We don’t have as many horses as we used to have.”
In B.C., Watson said the number of breeders has declined over the last decade to something more than 200 now, compared with the mid-300s a decade ago, as older members of the community retire.
In the last few years, however, Watson said his group has seen renewed interest in horse ownership among a younger audience, driven in part by the increasing presence of syndicates — groups that get together to buy horses, which has solidified numbers.
“It’s almost like we’ve lost a generation,” Watson said.
In recent years, MacDonald said, the track has had considerable success drawing a younger crowd with the return of Friday-night races during the summer, so will do so again with six night sessions through the end of July and all of August.
“We’re constantly trying to come up with new ways to keep revenue streams growing,” MacDonald said.
They’re also looking to build off the success of the quirky and popular summer tradition of wienerdog races for Dachshunds, which take place on the track in front of the grandstand during a break between horse races.
Last year, Hastings saw its biggest crowds, between 10,000 and 12,000, during the second day of a weekend’s worth of wiener-dog festivities, MacDonald said, so they ’re looking to add a day for bulldogs and a day for corgis into the mix.
“Anything to try to get new people out” to experience racing, MacDonald said.
Hastings leases the City of Vancouver-owned facilities at the track. Its last lease extension was for three years, which expires in November 2019.
Watson said it would give breeders and owners a bit more comfort if that lease were longer, since the cycle of breeding a mare and getting a horse to an age that it can race is a five-year process. However, MacDonald said, he couldn’t disclose what might be taking place about the next extension because Great Canadian is a publicly traded company.