Beyond the careers in harness racing that involve handling, caring for and racing horses, the industry employs many valuable individuals in essential roles behind the scenes.
A case could be made that there aren’t many jobs at the racetrack more important than the one teenager Mya McCarthy has at The Raceway at Western Fair District.
McCarthy is a little more than six weeks into her role as one of the tote operators at the London, Ont. track. That means she’s in charge of ensuring betting is cut off at exactly the right time, among other functions critical to the wagering bottom line that supports the entire operation.
On a Monday night in November, McCarthy is seated at a desk in a back room on the second floor of the track. Television screens on shelves above the desk are tuned to the racing broadcasts from Woodbine Mohawk Park in Milton, Ont., Northfield Park near Cleveland, Ohio and, of course, Western Fair.
McCarthy enters any changes into the tote computer – horse scratches, driver changes, etc. – halts betting just after the horses leave the gate, enters the official order of finish after receiving a phone call from the race judges and sets the schedule for the next race’s post time at Western Fair, a slot carefully chosen by management to avoid a race going off at the same time as a race at another North American track. Going at the same time as another race can really hurt wagering handle coming in from bettors all over the world.
She admits there was a bit of pressure at the start and it took someone training her for the first few cards, but now she is comfortable doing the job on her own.
“I had people sit in here with me about four times, but now I’m on my own and I’ve gotten the hang of it,” said McCarthy.
Greg Blanchard, the director of equine programming at Western Fair, has his office just down the hall and is also a quick cell phone call away if McCarthy needs help or has a question.
“There are some different things that can happen – refunds, placings – that aren't the regular,” said Blanchard. “We had one night when we had a triple refund.”
But all in all, McCarthy is handling her new responsibilities well after starting out with the company as a concert usher during the Western Fair held in early September.
McCarthy is currently taking a gap year from school, but her new job gets the thumbs up from her friends.
“They think it’s pretty cool because they think horses are pretty cool,” said McCarthy.
As for Blanchard, he said it’s wonderful to have a younger person learning an important job at the track.
“It’s great,” he said. “The average person isn't even aware these jobs exist… and you need young people that have the flexibility and can learn it so that in future years you have people.”
Mya McCarthy and Deb Salhani
Fifty years into her career at The Raceway at Western Fair District and 36 years since she became the track charter, Deb Salhani said she’s never been bored working at the racetrack.
“I still like coming,” she said on a recent Monday night, mere minutes before the first race went to post at the London oval. “It's been a great ride. I've enjoyed all my time here. They've been good to work for.
“I think I've seen a dozen announcers and probably five or six CEOs retire.”
Salhani started working at Western Fair as a mutuel seller early in the winter of 1976. She moved to the race office in 1987 and then in 1989, she moved to the judges’ stand to become the track charter, a role she’s held ever since.
“I've always been interested in horses,” said Salhani. “I came to the races with my mother when I was a kid, and I’ve bought horses and had horses my whole life. I had a full-time job that I worked for 40 years and I did this part time.”
The charter plays a critical role at a racetrack determining where each horse is positioned at each quarter-mile and the finish, as well as how far away they were from the leading horse at each station. The charts are posted online and printed in race programs and become important information for bettors handicapping the races. Since betting handle is a critical source of income for a racetrack, a charter’s accuracy is key.
“It’s like a referee in hockey,” said Blanchard. “You don’t want to ever hear about [the charter] from your customers… But you’ll hear about it if [the charts] are wrong.”
High above The Raceway, Salhani watches the races through binoculars and speaks into a tape recorder as the horses reach each quarter-mile station. She records herself saying each horse’s number and approximate distance, in lengths – about the distance of a horse from nose to tail – behind the leading horse.
“We're supposed to call at the quarter as if you stopped the race at the quarter and we took a picture,” said Salhani. “When they go by the quarter, into the tape recorder I say, ‘one by one and a half, two by a neck, three by half,’ and then I play that tape back and add it up again. If a horse has got his nose right on a driver’s helmet, we know that's one and a half [lengths]. Then, if there's a little bit of a gap, we know it's one and three-quarters… If it looks like you can put another horse in between two horses, then that would be two [lengths]. There’s five [lengths] between each pylon.
“It's a job that’s different because when you're doing this, they're moving, and that's where people have difficulty and they really want to give it up really fast because they can't [process it]. But once you do it enough times, it’s like they're standing still to you and the call is quicker.”
Salhani can also look at the video replay of the race to ensure she has the correct chart lines, but that is rarely necessary.
“If a horse makes a break right in the middle of my call, I can go to the replay and look,” she said.
Beyond races where she can’t see the horses, such as during fog or a snowstorm, the most difficult races to call are the uncompetitive ones where horses are strung out at greater distances, she said.
“The more gapped out they are, the more you're guessing,” she said.
Back in the late 1980s, when she was working in the Western Fair race office, Salhani heard that the charter job was going to be available, so she asked Mike Hamilton to train her to do it at Orangeville Raceway.
“He had the company Central Program,” Salhani said of Hamilton, who employed charters to produce race programs for several Ontario racetracks. “I said, ‘If I come to Orangeville, will you train me to chart?’ I didn't want any pay. I just knew that I wanted to learn this job.”
Salhani remembers that it was four days of training and it was a little difficult to learn at first.
“Now it's different,” said Salhani. “You have to be accredited. I trained a woman at Grand River that's there now and she was the best part of three months learning the job. You have to have so many hours -- I think it's 40 hours in the stand -- and then you learn the job and it depends on how confident you are whether you're ready to go ahead. Then you have to write an exam.”
Salhani said the people best suited for the job already know a little about the horse business.
“Although I wasn't very confident [at first, it helps to be] fairly confident because it's a job that can be really intimidating at the start,” she said. “I've tried to train two or three people that just gave up. They just thought it was too much because you've got such a small amount of time to compose the chart. I keep telling them, ‘You're going to get better at this. You'll get faster. Just stay with it.’”
Five decades on, Deb Salhani is glad she did just that.
(With files from Ontario Racing)