Now in its fifth year, the James Vinnell Owner for a Day promotion continues to attract horse racing handicappers to the Standardbred side and encourage racehorse ownership.
Spearheaded by The Betting Company (TBC), the James Vinnell Owner for a Day promotion recently wrapped up at Fraser Downs at Elements Casino in Surrey, B.C. with a handful of the sport's fans getting the opportunity to experience what it is like to be the owner of a racehorse.
Participants qualified for the race day experience after winning two-day handicapping contests held at six TBC Teletheatre sites around B.C.'s Lower Mainland in February. A total of nine contest winners and wild card participants then advanced to the grand finale where they drew a horse to "own" in the James Vinnell Owner for a Day Pace and cheered them on to earn the equivalent in purse money that is awarded to top five finishers in a race.
The big night was Friday, March 3 with the contest owners drawing horses from the $6,900 eighth race. Tahuya Roadster and driver Mike Hennessy scored a wire-to-wire victory for his contest rep, who qualified from the Hastings handicapping contest and earned the $3,450 winner's share of the prize purse. The five-year-old Brandons Cowboy gelding is trained by Erik Neyhart and is actually owned by Douglas Neyhart and Donna Scrannage.
To complete the ownership experience, each of the participants also enjoyed dinner for two, a $50 betting voucher, barn tour to meet their horse, and commemorative photo. The race winner was also presented with a trophy.
This is the fifth year that TBC has coordinated the Owner for a Day contest, which was recently renamed to honour the late B.C. horseman James Vinnell, who inspired the promotion before his passing in 2015.
"James Vinnell was a very well known horseman at Fraser Downs and he brought this idea to me," said Jay Groberman, Marketing Manager at TBC. "He was the original guy who thought about this, but then unfortunately he passed away a couple years ago and we decided we were going to change the name to the 'James Vinnell Owner For A Day.' He was a really great guy and he really supported horse racing at Fraser Downs."
Groberman initially started the Owner For A Day contest to get people excited about wagering on Standardbred racing, and has since expanded the promotion to include an annual Thoroughbred edition as well.
"The original idea behind it was to basically go into racebooks and get people more familiar with Standardbred racing and with Fraser Downs racetrack. It wasn't as much about the racebooks as it was about the actual racetrack and harness racing and trying to bring to more attention to that," said Groberman. "It worked really well with the Standardbreds and at Fraser Downs so now we also do it at Hastings for the Thoroughbreds as well.
"We do it every year at the same time and people look forward to it every year at the beginning of Spring. There are people that wait for it every year, but we always get new people every year as well. Word seems to travel about it; year after year we always seem to have more people competing in it."
While it depends on the specific racebook sites and day of the week, Groberman says he has seen attendance spike as much as three to five times normal levels on the day the handicapping contests are held. Since he started the promotion, he has also seen participation in the contests double at specific locations where Standardbreds are not a popular bet.
"There's more people that are actually participating and I hope getting to know it for betting and contributing to the Standardbreds at Fraser Downs when I'm not there [running the contests]."