Woodbine Park
Woodbine Racetrack in the northwestern suburb of Rexdale in Toronto, Ontario is the only horseracing track in North America which stages, or is capable of staging, thoroughbred and standardbred horse racing programs on the same day.
It is owned by Woodbine Entertainment Group, formerly the Ontario Jockey Club.
The track was opened in 1956. It has been extensively remodelled since 1993, and in 2004 has three racecourses.
History
The current Woodbine carries the name originally used by a racetrack which operated in east Toronto, at Queen Street East and Kingston Road, from 1874 through 1993. (While the old racetrack was at the south end of Woodbine Avenue, the current Woodbine is nowhere near it.) On June 12, 1956 the name was transferred to the new racetrack; the old track was converted to a combined thoroughbred and standardbred track known thereafter as Old Woodbine or, for most of the rest of its history, as Greenwood Raceway (during standardbred meets) and Greenwood Race Track (during thoroughbred meets). The two thoroughbred and two standardbred meets conducted there were transferred to the new Woodbine in 1994; it had been exclusively devoted to thoroughbred racing before then.
The Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championship was held at Woodbine in 1996.
The Woodbine facility is also home to the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.
Physical Attributes
The outermost, the E. P. Taylor turf course for thoroughbreds, is one and a half miles (2414 m) long with a chute allowing races of a mile and an eighth (1811 m) to be run around one turn. It is irregularly shaped, the clubhouse turn departing from the traditional North American oval, and the backstretch is from 2 ft 6 in to 3 ft (80 cm to 90 cm) higher than the homestretch. The Taylor turf course and the main dirt course at Belmont Park on New York’s Long Island are the only mile-and-a-half layouts in North American thoroughbred racing.
Inside the Taylor course is the main Polytrack course for thoroughbreds, a left-handed one-mile oval with chutes facilitating races at seven furlongs (1408 m) and at a mile and a quarter (2011 m).
Inside the dirt course is an oval standardbred racecourse seven-eighths (1408 m) of a mile in circumference, made of crushed limestone.
The ground floor of the stands houses a slot machine parlour. Some of the income from the slot machines is used to increase the horserace purses.
