This evening Rosa and I went to see our first horse race. We went to the Rideau Carleton Raceway south of Ottawa. It is also a casino so technically this was our first time in a casino too.
This will be one of the final races of the 2011 season – its getting dark earlier. The temperature was very nice this evening.
The track is 5/8ths of a mile. when we got there and started watching the warmups we found that this track has only standardbred harness racing. We were hoping to see something closer to a thoroughbred race (flat race) or a steeplechase with a jockey on the horse. In harness racing the driver sits in a sulky, which is a very lightweight two-wheeled cart that is pulled behind the horse.
I wanted to come to take photos as practice. I walked around trying to use the setting sun to warm up the photos. It was an excellent opportunity to practice panning. I also wanted to get a photo of all four hooves off the ground like the famous Muybridge series.
We watched about four races before Rosa was too bored to stay. On our way out, we looked in on the buffet. It looked so good – we will have to come back again.