Bush Track Junket number 20 launched to Arapahoe Park near Denver on July 16th with six die-hard punters in tow. With regulars Dave and Billy D unable to answer the bell for the second straight junket, we were left with a “family affair”, a pair of brothers (Commish and Boomer), a husband and wife team (Jimmy Bond and Barbara) and a father and son combo (Joe and Jojo Cato). The first four booked into the very utilitarian Crestwood Suites ($55) in Aurora while Joe bunked down at Jojo’s apartment just a few scant miles west in Denver.

The Group Shot on Sunday, missing Jojo who made only Saturday's card.

We were limited to just 3 days at the oval as that’s all they run consecutively these days, with Friday (745 in attendance), Saturday (1,573) and Sunday (1,993) cards. But that may have sufficed just fine as only Boomer and Commish made all 3 days anyway. Jimmy and Barb skipped Saturday to go visit a brewery in Boulder (now there’s a surprise) and try some Trivia bars while Jojo made only Saturday and Joey made Saturday and about 2 races on Sunday. Just like at Del Mar, all junketeers seem to get exactly what they want out of these excursions.

The track is located 7 miles east of the fittingly named Chambers Drive out on the east edge of Aurora. It’s an unimpressive looking place from the road with a glassed-in but rather small grandstand and an infield gone au-natural with chaparral and scraggly pine trees scattered amongst the weeds.

The glassed in grandstand 45 mintues to first post.

The old tote board looks like they may have salvaged it from the demolished Centennial Park as the message board on the left end displays nothing but a rectangular light pattern, always on and totally useless. The track is a little odd too. The seven panel chute is attached at an angle from the main track, off the clubhouse turn, that reminds one of a European layout. Meanwhile the main track has a backstretch significantly higher in elevation than the stretch. This means the horses run uphill on the clubhouse turn and downhill on the stretch turn.

With win pools as low as $900, favoritism jumped all over the place.

All of it combines for a great bush track look except for inside the building where the place is neat as a pin. We’ve never seen a cleaner plant with absolutely no litter and the cement floors buffed up military style. They even have Chippendale tables and chairs set around, adorned with fresh flowers. (Sit in one though, and the guard gets you.) The club house ($10) is really the upper portion of the grandstand with each box seat cubicle equipped with a mini-tv set. The grandstand meanwhile ($3 but $1 seniors and free parking for everybody) has very nice theatre type seats in air conditioned comfort. All this closed in behind glass that, while never great for viewing a race thru, was much better than Sunland Park’s glass. We actually spent some time down on the apron too. It’s actually the best place to watch the races as they provide Del Mar style aluminum bleachers located just about at the 70 yard pole. There is no glass between you and the horses and with the elevated backstretch, you miss none of the action. But word of warning, wear your hat and sunblock out there as I caught a lot of mile-high sun.

At the Crestwood Suites we had a dynamite handicapping area set up including computer access to race replays.

Some areas needing upgrades, however, would be (1) the rather antiquated self-serve tote machines; (2) the snack bars which were horrible (hot dogs or polska $3.50, hamburgers $4.50, large soda $4 and beers $3.50) compared to Sunland Park’s top-o-the-line smorgasbord fare; (3) the English-accented track announcer (Craig Braddick) who calls a race quite well but loves to hear himself squawk incessantly between races while one tries to handicap and (4) worst of all, the morning line maker. This guy, who is not named in the program, blew the favorite on 7 of the 17 TB races we saw. In addition he served up the following rather memorable gaffs: Flying So Free 10 off at 7/2; Go Gus

Go 6 off 25, Call Me Mr Cash 15 off 2, Brite Maneuvers 20 off 4, Temptors Alibi 10 off 7/2, Celebrate Freedom 5/2 off 6, Mighty Tango 8 off 2, Papa Grande 12 off 4, Hammerin Hank 3 off 8 and everybody’s favorite, Raise The Fee 10 off 5/2 chalk. In short, you don’t want to pay any attention to the morning line at Arapahoe Pock, as Braddick would pronounce it. In the same vein, don’t let the tote board sway you either. The win pools are so thin that a $10 bet can move your horse from 5-1 to 2-1 in one blink. This can work in your favor too, so stick with the horse you picked in your room no matter what happens on the toteboard.

Now lets move on to the action out on the track. For starters, Arapahoe qualifies nicely as a REAL bush track in that amazing payoffs pop-up frequently. Samples would include a 9-5 second chalk hooking up with a 5-2 favorite producing a $208 daily double (two horses that Jimmy bet win money on but not in the Double) and the second chalk in a 6 HORSE FIELD hooked up with the longest shot on the board returning a $951 exacta. We also witnessed 3 Trifectas and 4 Superfectas that nobody had, plus one Superfecta that paid off on 1-2-all-all. Lucky patrons can drag down an entire pool here!

Arapahoe Park has one of the tallest patrol judge towers in all of racing.

Part of the reason is the ArP signal has very few subscribers. The mutual guy explained that only 3 bars in the Denver area and TVG offer off- track betting at Arapahoe. For this they use the “manual merge” method whereby the OTB money is dropped in in one lump sum during the running. Most of the time this adds only a few hundred dollars to the pool but in several cases horses odds changed markedly between gate and wire. Obviously not a good situation.

Damn near every start had some horse out slowly-- and several times it was mine.

The larceny factor was, as usual, hard to quantify. We saw several steam horses roll right in but we also saw a few finish up the track. The ones that cost our boys money would include One Bounce Check ML 4-1 off at 3-2 with very late money—nipping Boomer on the wire at 46-1; LittleBrownWolf 6-1 off 2-1 who got second in the exacta; Princess Hailey 6-1 off 3-1 winning; and Toccet To Me 3-1 at post-time, 9-5 on the wire, also winning while skimming Jimmy in the process. As far as the runnings went, they seemed more legit than Sunland Park in that we saw no boat races with lone Fs cruising thru slow fractions. They do have a bad rule in Colorado, however, where they don’t couple horses with the same owner and/or trainer. We witnessed one guy (Kenneth Gleason) with 4 horses in one race shoe in a wire-to-wire winner at 3-1 while his more favored closer never made a move. It leaves a bad taste.

"Did you hear the joke about the girl jock from Nantuckett?"

The cards we saw were not terrific. They had 4 Arabian races where the jocks could have jumped off at the 1/16 pole and beat the horses to the wire, and 6 quarter horses races (always a pass) sprinkled around on the three 9 race programs. The TBs were generally in the $3,200 to $10,000 claiming range with the BIG race being the $20,000 Colorado Derby on Sunday. Nine races were sprints of 6f or less but they did have eight races at 7f or longer.

So is a repeat visit to Arapahoe Park in order? Well, the overhead costs are low, the racing quality acceptable and the competition in the grandstand seems very beatable as we had 3 of the 6 of us end up in the black (Joey, Jojo and Jimmy). I’d rate the place below Elko or Grants Pass for “NSAA handicapper’s edge” but certainly better than Sunland and most of the other bigger tracks we’ve visited. The problem is traveling all day on each end to watch 17 TB races. It makes it a tough call. Next stop, our BTJ home away from home over at Turf Paradise.

Despite 2 previous weekends of off tracks, we got clear and fast for BTJ #20.