ONE MINUTE AND 32 SECONDS. That’s how long it took the fastest horse to ever run at Emerald Downs to win a milelong race. That’s less time than it takes to properly brush your teeth.

But that minute and a half inspires the whole equine world that revolves around the track.  

On clear days, Mount Rainier serves as a dramatic backdrop to the races. The Auburn racetrack is fronted by a paddock for winners and a six-level grandstand building with box suites — some of which are filled with guests in big hats and bow ties, as is horse racing tradition. The facility also boasts its own production control room to handle the live feeds of races at Emerald Downs and other tracks to screens in the off-track betting area inside the clubhouse. The grandstand’s carnival atmosphere is particularly family-friendly, offering street food favorites such as doner sandwiches, fried chicken and hot dogs. A kids area has bounce houses, sidewalk chalk drawing and free pony rides to inspire the next generation of jockeys. 

The operations here have a charming, personal, analog nature. Each race begins with the distinctive traditional bugle fanfare, a tune known as “First Call” or “Call to the Post,” played live by the track’s in-house bugler Dan Harrington, who has done the job since 2000 dressed in a top hat and tails. Jockeys make their own distinctive entrances to music, like boxers or baseball batters. The voice you hear over the loudspeakers is Tom Harris, a longtime pro who calls every race from the lofty heights of a tiny room beside the camera that films them. Down the hall is the track’s in-house statistics guru, dutifully tracking race times on a laptop, punctiliously ensuring that the records are correct.

Between races, the scent of anticipation mingles with the aroma of fried food and the shuffling of people finding the perfect spot to watch. Then the bugle calls, the gates crash open on the far side of the track, and everyone goes quiet as the horses find their lanes and positions. As they thunder toward the finish line, the crowd noise rises with cheers of encouragement and desperate curses flung at the dust; bets are won or lost by the hairs on the end of a horse’s nose (and, yes, there is a camera for photo finishes). Once the race is over and the victor trots over to the winner’s circle for pictures and accolades, the noise dies down and the cycle starts again. 

Of course, the stars of the show — the athletes — are the horses, and they are treated accordingly. Their digs include 11 on-site barns, which can house roughly 1,200 horses and their handlers. The vast equine hotel, which is not open to the public, contains stalls strewn with fresh hay, hot walkers (spindly contraptions that allow a handler to walk a horse in a circle), a veterinary hospital and even a chaplaincy for the prayers (both race-related and otherwise) of horse owners, groomers and handlers. 

According to track president Phil Ziegler, Emerald Downs, which is currently owned and operated by the Muckleshoot Tribe of Indians, can comfortably accommodate 10,000 to 12,000 spectators. The facility opened in 1996, replacing the area’s previous Thoroughbred racetrack: Longacres (also known as Longacres Park) in Renton, which closed in 1992. Built on land that was formerly owned by a dairy farm, the Emerald Downs racetrack encircles an infield of wetland. Geese and other birds blithely waddle about while the crowd cheers from across the lanes. Nearby wetlands were created or enhanced by Emerald Downs as part of an environmental mitigation agreement with King County.

Emerald Downs holds races on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the racing season, which starts in April or May and lasts into September. It’s not considered a high-stakes racetrack, as stakes top out at roughly $60,000; high-stakes tracks reach hundreds of thousands, even a million, in the case of races like the Kentucky Derby.

Still, there’s no shortage of excitement at Emerald Downs, which, like minor league baseball, provides visitors a dash of whimsy and humor. The track attracts crowds for its goofy spectacle races. It was an early adopter of corgi and wiener dog races (for fun, not for betting), holds races for adults and kids wearing inflatable T. rex suits, and made national news in 2023 by inaugurating a now-annual Grandparents Race in which spry grandparents burst through the gates and speed (so to speak) for a finish line 40 yards away. Race times are not officially recorded, but those magical few seconds are inspiring in their own way.