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| 106th Millarville races |
1 July is Canada Day and this year, the country was celebrating its 144th birthday. I decided to celebrate by heading to the Millarville (the nearest 'town' to my home on the ranch) race track to watch the 106th running of the Millarville races.
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| The day kicks off with the 'Musical Ride' |
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| Side saddle competitors get ready to compete ... I fell in love with the horse on the far side |
The day began with several traditional events, including a side saddle race, a stock horse race and a musical ride, where a group of riders performed a choreographed ride to a series of crackly songs. The 'real' events - 6 thoroughbred races - got underway in the early afternoon. These events were interspersed with foot races for the children.
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| Side saddle race |
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| Stock horse race |
The atmosphere was just slightly different to that of a race day during the Melbourne Cup carnival. For starters, drinking was contained to the temporary beer garden, meaning that the crowd watching the horses was filled with good, clean fun, rather than drunken fun. C and I had several animated conversations with the (mainly old) race-goers around us. Secondly, the maximum bet was $10. Still, this made for a difficult task when it came to choosing horses upon whom to place your money. Watching the horses in the parade ring beforehand didn't help much as the horses were not nearly as sleek and fit-looking as those that you'd see at the Melbourne Cup. So, I decided to choose my horses with a very complicated criteria ... the horse's name. This turned out to be a lucky way to select horses as my first choice, 'Independent Woman', won the first race by quite a distance! When none of the horse names appealed, I turned to the jockey names. Valentino McBean and Hector Rabbitskin were my two favourites, with Valentino winning 4 of the 6 races. Thirdly, the dress code was very casual. No hat required ladies ... unless of course, it was a cowboy hat. Shorts, t-shirts and bug spray was the clothing of the day and much needed they were as it turned out to be a spectacular summer day.
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| Thoroughbred racing |
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| Coming up the straight |
The Millarville races gave me yet another opportunity to reflect upon the unique experiences I have been involved in over the past several years. Never before did I think I'd be singing (okay, mumbling) the Canadian national anthem at a country race meet in Canada. Happy birthday Canada!
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| Nearly at the finish line |
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| Nearly there |
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| Neck to neck |
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| Valentino McBean, you've done it again! |
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| Children's foot race |
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| Watching the country races is serious stuff! |
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| Coming around the bend |
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| Next Millarville event, the rodeo. I'll be there. |
4 comments:
It was a perfect day wasn't it! I rode in the sidesaddle race on the big chestnut. I was wondering, would you mind if I saved a copy of the photo you took? It's a great one! We didn't get many good ones of the race.
Hi Michelle, sorry I didn't get back to you earlier, I have been in China, where blogspot doesn't work! If you like, I can email you all the pictures of the side saddle race? BTW - Your horse is simply beautiful!
I saw that! That must have been a really interesting trip!
I would love the pics if you wouldn't mind! My email address is cheadle underscore chick at hotmail dot com.
Thanks!
Great, I'll forward them on when I get a chance. I saw that you had some pretty good ones on your blog too, which by the way, is great!
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