Although it may not feel like it, the calendar says it is spring. Hopefully it will feel more like spring this coming Sunday afternoon (April 1) when the 2018 season of live harness racing kicks off at Century Downs in Balzac, Alberta.

The program of live racing will kick off with a first-race post time of 1:15 p.m.

“Horsemen have been able to get some training done,” the track’s racing secretary, Jackson Wittup, has told Peter Watts. “But everybody’s behind schedule. We’ve got about 150 horses on the grounds. Twenty-five of them made it successfully through qualifying on Saturday morning. Some that are here are still eligible to race without having to qualify. We’ll see what the entry box looks like on Wednesday morning.

“We may be short until Fraser Downs closes on April 14 and until a half-dozen horsemen who have spent the winter racing at Cal Expo in Sacramento return to the province. Ryan Grundy’s probably done the best of any of the Alberta trainers who went south for the winter. I expect that there are 12-15 trainers at Fraser Downs who we can expect to show up for the season here at Century Downs. So, we’ll do the best we can with what we have until they arrive.”

Through March 24, Grundy had a 9-11-12 log from 96 starters at Cal Expo. Quentin Schneider has also done pretty well, as he has posted an 8-12-5 slate from 68 starters. The good news is that when they arrive they’ll be bringing stables of horses that have been racing, so it should not take long for them to find their way to the entry box. It’ll be the same story for those stables which have been competing through the winter at Fraser Downs.

What to do with them when they come to Alberta is the next question. Most of the stable space at Century Downs has been booked. There’s room for horses at Olds College, about 45 minutes north of the racetrack. Also, the new owners of The Track on Two at Lacombe, a little more than an hour north of Balzac, are working hard and hope to have at least 70 stalls ready for use by April 15.

“The track is cleared,” Kurt Belich has said. He and partner Ross Morrison took over the facility from Bobby Allan last summer and have been working hard to make improvements.

“Ron Grift, who spent 30 years at Northlands Park in Edmonton, is coming in this week to examine the racetrack and tell us what we need to do to get it ready for training,” said Belich. “We’ve got a stall application on the ASHA website if some trainers are looking for space. We’re doing considerable work on the grandstand. We’ve added things like washrooms on the main level. Getting the kitchen in shape is the next project on the list. We’re also applying to the county for permits to expand what we can offer to both the public and to horsemen. Right now, we can accommodate about 600 people. But we’d like to grow that number and we’d like to offer a more diverse entertainment product on race days and more events generally.

“We’re also working with Horse Racing Alberta to get a ‘B-track’ license to stage races. We had a day or two of racing last fall and we think there’s room for more. We’ve got 20 acres of ground north of the grandstand that’s never been developed, so we’re examining what we could do with that. In all, we have about 145 acres of land on the east side of Highway 2. As well, we have a small parcel on the west side of the highway.

“By the time we get these improvements finished we’ll have invested about $1.5 million in the project, over and above what we paid for the purchase. So, we’re serious about supporting the industry and excited about the possibilities for the future.”

Stabilizing that facility is part of Belich’s drive to be an option to provide harness racing with a venue this fall. Work is underway at Century Mile in Leduc, but it appears the new facility won’t be ready for the meet that was scheduled to start there in mid-September. Century Casino, which is building the facility, has told the industry that the opening has been pushed back to the spring of 2019. Officials from Horse Racing Alberta and Alberta Standardbred are currently looking at alternatives.

(Alberta Standardbred Horse Association)