Born To Ride

[NewsCopy]

  ABBEVILLE, La. - At their home here on farmland deep in the heart of Cajun country, an 80-year-old, French-speaking horse trainer named Clarence Hebert and his wife of 44 years, Velta, keep a battered photo album that overflows with pictures and newspaper clippings. A label on the front of the album carries a single, resonant word: "RACES."

The artifacts in the album are more or less all that remains of Cajun Downs, a rugged straightaway racetrack that used to run through the Heberts' sugar cane fields. In the photos, crowds of country people are leaning over the wooden rails to cheer for the horses. All of the races seem to have consisted of two horses racing head to head. All the jockeys seem to have been 10-year-old boys. It wasn't quite Churchill Downs or Pimlico, but it might have been something even more special than that.

Cajun Downs was one of the legendary "bush tracks" that once dotted southwest Louisiana until fairly recently. In the last few decades, a variety of economic forces have wiped them out, but before that happened bush tracks were more than just a rollicking good time on a summer weekend; they were the grassroots foundation to the Sport of Kings.

The rest of the story

By Nathaniel Vinton
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

[cjr3888]

I spent much of my childhood at Cajun Downs. They had the greatest cheeseburgers.


igeaux.mobi

[BeauCajun]

_ I spent much of my childhood at Cajun Downs. They had the greatest cheeseburgers.

_

Yep, me too. I had an uncle that would bring us on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes there, a few times in Erath and at Broussard's off of W. Broussard Road.