Preparations at Vancouver’s Hastings Race Track are underway for the televised broadcasting of the 144th Belmont Stakes in New York this Saturday, June 9. Once a racist internment camp during World War II, the Hastings track has since been transformed into a free haven for ruling class corporate interests, profitably linked to the Vancouver gambling economy. Noticeably, not a single historic plaque is mounted at the site to commemorate the unjust imprisonment of Japanese Canadians of that era.
Instead, on Saturday, a forty-foot screen will be mounted on the Hastings Track infield projecting a live simulcast of the Belmont Stakes, the third jewel of the Triple Crown, to thousands of bettors and horse racing fans in attendance. The star attraction for most Canadian and global media outlets is I’ll Have Another, a three-year old thoroughbred colt who has already won the prestigious Kentucky Derby (the first jewel), the Preakness Stakes (second jewel) in May, and now vies to snatch the always elusive Belmont Stakes to make I’ll Have Another the first U.S. Triple Crown winner in the 21st century.