Hovdey: Presque Isle caught in the headlights

The wildlife is winning in western Pennsylvania. The people who run Presque Isle Downs have had to cancel programs and reschedule post times to deal with the potential dangers posed by deer romping around the racetrack. The Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners has been consulted, and there is something called the Deer Management Assistance Program in which antlerless deer are legally “harvested” (like strawberries), but that season does not officially start until late November.

So goes the clash of civilization and nature. As far as deer of a certain age are concerned, the racetrack wasn’t even there 10 years ago. To them, the presence of racing horses has come as a complete surprise. But Presque Isle is not the first racetrack to go crosswise with the animal kingdom.

The “Animal Planet” website still carries the horrific scene at Sandown Race Course in Australia that took place in 2005 when seemingly every seagull in New South Wales fled rough waters in a nearby bay to find temporary respite at the track. The gulls were an unruly bunch, though, and when a field of runners turned into the final straight the birds took flight in one massive, flapping white cloud.

In self-defense the riders spread across the track, but it was too late to avoid the swarm. Five jockeys hit the deck as their horses spooked, and one of the broke his arm. Alfred Hitchcock would have had a field day.

The life expectancy of an American alligator can be upward of 50 years, so there is no way of knowing how often the pair who lived in the infield lake at Pompano Park harness track in Florida went to wandering. There is at least one documented incident of a race that had to be delayed while one of them sauntered across the track. And then there was the morning in June 2001 that harness maker Donald Robinson found a healthy six-footer in a racetrack restroom coiled around a toilet.

“I didn’t want to step one more step into that stall,” Robinson told a local newspaper, adding that the alligator never showed signs of aggression.

Neither do deer, but don’t try telling that to jockey Bran Peck, who was an 18-year-old apprentice when some Bambi wannabe jumped in front of his horse in a race at Turfway Park in January 1989. Peck was cruising along on the lead when it happened and he hit the ground hard, fracturing his arm in the bargain.

West Coast racetrackers are not quite so worried about gators and deer. But coyotes are always candidates to go lurking where they don’t belong.

“They’re pretty smart, though,” said Kevin Havell, who manages the San Luis Rey Downs training center in north San Diego County, a property nearly surrounded by scrub brush, open spaces and an abandoned golf course. “You’ll see them watch and wait for horses to go by before they run across the track.

“Then there are the roadrunners,” Havell added.

California Chrome made more than his share of headlines during his 2014 Triple Crown run, but none were as goofy as the morning an opossum was spotted scurrying along the Belmont Park main track while the Derby-Preakness winner jogged nearby. Chances are they never saw each other, but the story that hit later next day suggested a disaster had been dodged.

“The marsupial carries the parasite Sarcocystis neurona which can be found it its feces,” came the reports. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture characterizes the parasite as the most common cause of equine protozoal myeloencephalitis [EPM] in horses in America. The illness attacks horses’ brain and nervous system and the results can be devastating. The disease can be fatal.”

As it turned out, California Chrome managed to avoid opossum poo, but he could not handle Tonalist.

“I had a filly 10 in front in a race at Hawthorne one time when a goose flew out in front of her from the infield,” said Tom Proctor, who won the – and I’m not kidding here – the Mother Goose Stakes last weekend with Include Betty.

Proctor has moved his training headquarters to Fair Hill in Maryland, where there is plenty of wildlife to contend with.

“I’ve seen a lot of red foxes when I go racing over at Delaware Park,” Proctor said. “But you don’t see a lot of them around here at Fair Hill, and I know why. There’s a whole bunch of these trainers who go on those fox hunts in their spare time.”

Tommy Wolski is a former jockey who rode both East and West before making Vancouver his home as a racing journalist. While riding at Tropical Park in the late 1980s he had an alligator encounter of his own when suddenly the riders in front of him started to veer.

“I didn’t see right away what it was, but there was no mistaking it was an alligator,” Wolski said. “You don’t want to mess with one of those.”

Far more traumatic, however, was the stakes at Suffolk Downs that was marred by a whole different form of indigenous wildlife. Wolski was there for that one, too.

“It was some guy who got loose from the local mental hospital,” Wolski said. “There were just four of us in the race, and Joe Spinale was on the lead when the guy ran out on the track and started waving his arms. Joe’s not about to let that stop him from winning the race, so he aims right for the guy, and the guy moves.”

If only the deer were that smart.