A good day…

It was obvious from the moment I pulled onto the parking lot that they weren’t going to be as busy at Tampa Bay Downs on Saturday as I’ve come to expect them to be. But I had noticed that there was a big day of racing planned for the next day so I wasn’t that surprised. It meant for slightly less competition at the rail when it came time to try for photos, a boon for the shorter photographers among us. Namely me. This is one of the few photo walks from my group that is still happening in this pandemic, and I think it will happen only once more before the heat becomes too much and they stop racing for the summer.

I suppose it really isn’t possible to catch the horse with his nose breaking the finish line, er pole, since it’s really the pedestal he’ll get to first. But I still had to take this shot.

The new official photographer likes to get in our shots of the finish line. She gets to stand up to the rail.

Everyone’s masks were on, if not correctly covering our nose and mouth.

Now we know what Santa is up to on his time off.

The owners’s official photo pose, just not for my camera.

Last time I was here I thought I had walked down to see the horses come around the bend, but it turns out that you can go a lot further down and be on the rail, and they are flying right towards you.

This is definitely the place to stand for photos.

I found a horse with all four feet off the ground.

Is it any wonder that those horses need to be hosed down after the race, as you see in the feature photo? There was a nice breeze blowing so those of us who spent most of the day standing in one place and talking didn’t get all that hot, but we didn’t quite last the whole day in the sun either, and headed home a little early. I wondered how much money was being won or last on a ‘slow’ day like this one seemed to be, then we heard a guy behind us declare that he’d just won over $700 on the last race. We checked the board and you only won $5 for every $2 bet, so you’ll have to do the math because it’s beyond me. Another nice day, probably nicer for that guy…

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