BANGOR – About the only thing keeping the rain dripping in through the ramshackle roof of the paddock on the Buck Street side of Bangor Raceway from evaporating off Cain MacKenzie’s head was his baseball cap.

MacKenzie, and many horsemen like him, are steaming mad and not just because of Tuesday’s nonstop rain.

It was supposed to be the day before Bangor Raceway’s thrice-postponed opening day of harness racing, but thanks to still-soggy track conditions and dangerously soft footing, Wednesday – and Friday – will also be washouts.

Following a visit by two Penn National grounds specialists Sunday and Monday, Bangor Raceway officials now think they know why they’ve had to postpone the first eight days of the racing season.

“They put salt down on it last fall and they tell me it’s the worst thing they could have done,” said Arnie Van Dyne, Bangor’s track superintendent for 15 years. “In the past, when they put salt down, they mixed it with sand, but not this year, and they did it at least once a week about the whole winter.”

All that unfiltered salt – plus this past year’s unusually late fall – combined to create three large areas, some as large as 20-by-100-feet, on the track where the surface is dangerously damp and spongy.

“What [the salt] does is it goes into the ground and holds all the moisture in. I guess since much of it went on after the water froze, it drove the frost deeper than normal,” said Van Dyne, who doesn’t work at the track during the winter. “When it goes down in the dirt, it keeps it from freezing and won’t let it dry or go to the surface either.

“I dug up the back stretch, where it’s worse, about two feet down and it’s just mud. You step on it and it’s spongy. It acts just like rubber. When horses step in there, it creates holes.”

Pinpointing the problem’s cause hasn’t assuaged horsemen much. They need to race.

“What are we supposed to do? Not feed our horses for four or five days? I’ve spent money in vet bills to get them healed up and get them ready to race, and we were guaranteed we’d race Wednesday,” said MacKenzie, a third-generation trainer and owner from Etna. “I get them in to race and they cancel on me, so I never should have spent that money.

“I’m about ready to sell my horses because I have zero money. I have two kids to feed and I’m broke.”

Jon Johnson, general manager of Penn National’s Bangor operations (Hollywood Slots casino, Bangor Raceway, and Bangor off-track betting parlor), understands MacKenzie’s anger and is no less frustrated.

“We’re as upset about the track as anybody because we want racing,” Johnson said. “We do care. We’re taking it seriously and working hard to get it open.”

Johnson and Van Dyne said the plan is to keep applying stone dust to the track surface, run it completely over with a screen, grade it (especially the problem areas) and roll it over.

“Besides that, good, dry windy weather is what would help the most,” Johnson said.

Johnson strongly disagreed with the notion that the track needs to be dug up and completely rebuilt.

“That’s not true at all. The track has a good clay base on it,” he said. “All it needs is more material on it.

“It needs a good layer of fine gravel on it that needs to be compacted, and then a good layer of stone dust on top of that. That’s our plan to do during the break [in July].”

That’s not much consolation to the horsemen, especially as pressure mounts to start racing.

“I get paid good money to train these horses, so now they [owners] are getting angry at me because they’ve spent all this money to race and now we can’t even train or anything,” MacKenzie said. “All that work I did before has pretty much been erased and I have to start from scratch again.”

Most are crossing their fingers for the newly revised Sunday opening day. All horsemen can do is wait, hope, and/or pray.

“This means a lot because it’s our income,” said trainer and former owner Steve Vafiades of Bangor. “I have three owners paying me to take care of their horses here and they expect me to race here.

“If this keeps up, they may give their horses to a trainer in southern Maine and have them race down there because it’s cheaper than trucking them back and forth or keeping them here and not racing.”

Commuting to another track may not be a solution either.

“I mean, if we have to truck down to Scarborough Downs at $4 a gallon for gas, unless we win or get second, it’s not worth it,” Vafiades added.

The postponements have reached crisis mode for most owners, trainers and drivers alike, whether it’s their living or a hobby.

“We wanted to get back into it after being out 20 years and get four or five horses,” said Danny King of Brewer, a Hood sales representative who also owns and runs a lawn care business. “We were going to buy a couple more horses, but now we’re wondering if maybe we should sell one or two.

“At least I have other incomes, but these guys don’t. I’m still going to lose a lot of money this year if we don’t start racing. I have $15-18,000 tied up in that one 2-year-old.”

Although it may only slightly offset horsemen’s expenses and losses so far, Johnson said they will not be charged rental for the barns this month.

“If we were going to charge them rent for the month of April, we aren’t now,” he said. “Other than that, I’m not sure what else we can do. We’re incurring costs, too, in material, manpower, renting equipment, advertising for races we can’t run… and we have no race income coming in either.”

Johnson said the raceway will also make a formal request before the Maine State Harness Racing Commission to run all canceled races in September.

“That’s our preference now, with racing on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, but that’s pending conflicts with other tracks and approval,” he said.

aneff@bangordailynews.net

990-8205

BANGOR RACEWAY

New opening date: Sunday, 1:30 p.m., (10-12 races)

Postponed openers: April 11, 18, 25, and 30

Race dates lost (eight of 54): April 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27, 30, and May 2

Proposed makeup dates (tentative): Sept. 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19, 21, 24, 26, 28