CLICK HERE for photos of a majority of the horses from the 2009 Barretts March Selected 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale. (two pages)

The racehorses you see when you come to the races at Fairplex Park are just the figurative shop window. Your average “backyard horse” cannot run as fast as a racehorse, and certainly not as long of a distance.

Like any human athlete, racehorses must train to be able to perform at their peak. They are exercised almost everyday, usually going to the track for a jog or gallop. The most difficult training is a timed workout, in which the horse runs at a full gallop for a short distance.

Randy McFadden has been timing workouts for 32 years. The first track he ever timed horses at was Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif. At Fairplex Park, he has watched thousands of horses run full tilt around the tight turns, clocking them intermittently from 1975 to 2000, and continuously for the past eight years. During the racing meet training hours normally begin at 5 a.m., meaning that McFadden often arrives before sunrise to begin work.

Horses train year round at Fairplex Park. When races are not running, there can be as few as a handful doing timed workouts each morning. That number skyrockets to an average of 50 workers per day by the time the Los Angeles County Fair racing rolls around. McFadden manages to time each horse with only one other person helping him.

Fairplex Park has a five furlong (5/8 mile) dirt oval track, and Thoroughbreds usually work from 3 furlongs to a mile, with a five furlong round-trip of the track being one of the most popular distances. Quarter Horses and a few mules often work from a starting gate and run a distance from 220 yards to 350 yards. Some Quarter Horses work up to a half mile.

“We time the morning workouts so the racing public is aware how horses are training. We have to make sure that the right time gets to the right horse. We need to make sure that the name the trainer has given is actually the right horse, so we have to identify the horse.” To identify horses, they look for identifying white marks and then check the official registration papers to verify that they are timing the correct horse. When the horse enters the track, they follow it until it reaches the furlong marker pole that is the designated starting point for the workout, then start the stopwatch.

McFadden is not the only person clocking horses at the track. Horsemen, handicappers, and other bystanders will watch workouts to handicap the competition, often watching for how a horse works, as well as its final time. If a horse is moving easily without any urging from the rider, they receive a “breezing” designation next to their published workout time. In southern California, such a designation is rarely afforded, with the majority of workouts notated as “handily,” or average, especially at Fairplex. Many people want to see the workouts in person to further evaluate the horse’s performance, but for McFadden, the focus is “[making] sure that the horse is timed correctly from point A to point B, and identifying the horse.”

McFadden says, “I like every aspect of the job. Certainly when we’re busy during the fair, it can be rather stressful and quite hectic. I mean, if I have an average of 50 horses a day, my phone will ring over a hundred times, because trainers call their horses in to identify them, and then they call back and want the time. Outside of that little aspect of it…it’s a great job. I’m very blessed.”

-Marcie Heacox