A day at the races — Down Under
SYDNEY — The first thing greeting you after strolling through the doors at Royal Randwick Racecourse, a 15-minute ride from the iconic Sydney Opera House, are options.
Will you make your bets with the house, as at tracks in the United States, or will you search out better odds with one of the 50 or so sanctioned bookies scattered throughout the grandstand?
Even for a lifelong racetracker like me who grew up explaining trifectas and reading the Form, the parlor at Randwick was nothing if not intimidating. It was a slice of Vegas, replete with sports betting and simulcasts and the din of expectant gamblers. And down the middle sat dozens of legal bookies, each with a stand and a light-up odds board -- a sort of bazaar for losing your money.
Many had goofy bookie names (think "Lucky Tom's" or "Skinny Mike"). Assistants typed away on laptops, keeping track of wagers and calculating updated odds. I was having a hard enough time coming to terms with decimal odds -- for instance, your horse might be 6.7-1 -- and payouts based on one-dollar bets, so I stuck with the house.
Not that I had too many tickets to cash.
While the fillies were contesting the Alabama back at Saratoga Race Course, I was 14 time zones away, trying to find a winner, all while getting accustomed to a different kind of horse racing experience, one that came with a $15 entry fee, $5 for the program. Unlike most tracks in the states, which open for weeks or months at a time, Royal Randwick operates far less frequently.
A stakes day is a special event in Australia, and I was fortunate that my visit coincided with an open afternoon at the track, one of just five that month. Oddly, the stakes were in the fourth and sixth races: the Group III Up and Coming Stakes and the Group II Warwick Stakes, the second of which carried a card-high $150,000 purse.
All of the eight races were contested on turf over a rigid rectangular track, complete with starting chutes for the various distances. (The only dirt track was a training course on the infield.) The turns were therefore quite sharp, and most of the frenzied jockeying happened once the horses headed into the long stretch.
Of course, I never got used to following the field running clockwise around the 2,213-meter course (shy of a mile and a half), called the Course Proper. As at Saratoga, there was an inner turf course, this one called the Kensington Track. For the first race, the turf was listed as dead, I think because August in Australia is winter and there was little spring in the grass. It was later upgraded to good.
For the track's sake, it's a good thing they only race over the beaten-up turf a couple times a month. Figuring out the types of bets was like ordering dinner off a menu in a foreign language you stopped speaking in junior high.
You can't bet a horse to show: there is a winner and two places, but you only collect on a third-place finish if there are at least eight horses in the race. You don't beat across the board, but rather put money on a horse "each way." There are quinellas and exactas in every race, but prepare for some raised eyebrows if you want to box the horses. The Pick 4 is called a quadrella, and the Pick 6, known as the Big 6, features legs from concurrent races from across the country's eight active tracks.
The toteboard lists odds for win and place for each horse, just one of several small differences at Randwick. I found myself begging for full race replays, but they showed only slow-mo close-ups of the victor's stretch run.
And it was confusing when the main big-screen TV showed live simulcast races complete with the race call. At first, I thought we had somehow missed betting and the call to the post, which, in truth, wouldn't have been a tragedy the way my horses were finishing.
One difference I loved? The tickets gave your horse's name along with the number. The track itself felt vaguely like Hollywood Park -- pretty but not at its best. My Australian host said the place looks best in summer, when the flowers are in bloom and the sun isn't setting by late afternoon.
Randwick traces its beginnings to 1833, adding "Royal" to its name when Queen Elizabeth visited in 1992 to christen an expensive grandstand renovation. But to someone weaned on Saratoga, the Emirates ads all over the rail and the parking lot on the infield were jarring.
You wouldn't go to Randwick to pick up a free T-shirt, nor would you drag in a cooler, mainly because there is no picnic area and the dress code is approaching formal.
A moneyed, mostly 30-something crowd milled about with champagne buckets, wearing flashy suits and dresses that recalled Saratoga's Turf Terrace.
I caught a few races in the grandstand, which was open seating and offered expansive views of the track and surrounding hills and neighborhoods.
But the best spot was under the sun on the rail, where I cheered the offspring of familiar sires like Distorted Humor, Giant's Causeway and Fusaichi Pegasus.
Another thing I learned -- for the most part, people don't throw their losing tickets on the ground. I found that out when I flicked an ill-informed exacta into the wind, only to have a concerned native tell me I had dropped something. Sheepishly, I headed back and picked it up.
It still wasn't a winner.