With the first horses setting foot on Canada's largest track yesterday, Alberta Downs' owner Robert Allen is eager for the official announcement that his track will host
a 15-day meet of harness racing.
"We have 210 horses here right now and eventually there will be room for over 400," Allen told Trot Insider. "Yesterday the horses were on the track for the first time, and by all reports the track was good for training."
Allen is confident that the deal will be imminently finalized for his track - the only one-mile harness racing oval in Canada - to start racing around the middle of April, and he's eager to show off his product to a national audience.
"Some of the construction still needs to be completed but it should be done for the first day of racing," stated Allen. " In order to simulcast we need 50 days, but we only have 15 so we're planning on amalgamating with the Rocky Mountain Turf Club to get our racing simulcast signal out there for Alberta and the rest of Canada."
As Alberta's racing industry faces adversity, Allen is quick to thank others for helping make this project a reality.
"A lot of people don't know that without Dr. David Reid and Shirley McClellan [of Horse Racing Alberta] this project wouldn't have happened."