‘Only game in town’: Osoyoos track set to revive horse racing in B.C.

Horse racing has been on the decline for years, but a raceway in Osoyoos is coming back from oblivion to keep the sport alive in B.C.

The Desert Park Exhibition Society in Osoyoos is set to have a racetrack again this fall. The track will bring horse racing back to the province after the last racetrack, Hastings Racecourse, closed at the end of 2025.

Kelly MacMillan is the president of the Western Canada Horse Racing Association, the non-profit set up to bring horse racing back to Osoyoos and revive it in B.C.

“It’s going to be the only game in town for the foreseeable future. I’m not sure that everyone is grasping that, but it’s huge,” he said.

MacMillan said it has taken a lot of time to get things in line, and the licenses haven’t officially gotten the stamp of approval yet but he doesn’t expect any issues.

Rebekka Lim, the president of the society, said they’re excited for the opportunity to keep horse racing alive.

“There isn’t very many intact tracks left in B.C.,” Lim told iNFOnews.ca. “Horses are still a part of our culture around here. And it’s part of the native culture around here as well… Times change, people change, culture changes, and we don’t want to see the horses gone.”

Before the pandemic there were thoroughbred races at Desert Park, the kind with jockeys, but coming this fall there will be standardbred harness racing, the kind with carts harnessed to the horses.

Lim said she grew up going to races in Kamloops. It meant something to her and the community.

“We would always go on Sunday afternoons after church, we’d go and watch the races. Usually it was thoroughbreds, but it was very much a great community thing. There were so many people that we knew and kids and farm life,” she said.

“I’m so glad to see it come back.”

Horse racing in B.C. goes back to 1889 when Vancouver had its first recorded thoroughbred race. In 2023 there were nine tracks in B.C. for thoroughbred and standardbred races, and after Hastings Racecourse and Fraser Downs closed in 2025 there were none.

In the 2000s there were several tracks in the Interior including Kamloops’ Sagebrush Downs and Vernon’s Kin Race Track. Kelowna used to have a track near the base of Knox Mountain.

After declining revenues Sagebrush Downs had its last race in 2010 and Kin Race Track closed in 2014 after an arsonist caused massive damage. Now, the City of Vernon is turning the old racetrack into a park.

A study for the BC Ministry of Public Safety found that the pandemic’s strain on the industry, reduced attendance over decades, lower gambling revenue caused by an increase in online gambling was the perfect storm of factors that brought about horse racing’s downfall.

Hastings Racecourse had to shut down after the government decided to stop giving it a portion of slot machine revenue.

MacMillan said it was an “unceremonious” end to a racetrack that had been around for more than a century.

He said the people who push the idea that online gambling killed horse racing are the same ones who profit from keeping tracks out of the gaming industry.

“You also have to understand that those comments are being fueled mostly by the casino operators who make more money without the horse racing,” he said. “We’ve got the best people in Canada working with us, and it’s feasible.

“I look forward to proving those statements wrong.”

The Desert Park Raceway had thoroughbred racing up until the pandemic, one of the last small town tracks in B.C., but Lim said it was difficult to recover.

So, when the Western Canada Horse Racing Association was formed as a non-profit to bring the track back following the closure of Fraser Downs racetrack in the summer of 2025, Lim was thrilled.

“When they shut down Fraser Downs, we started getting phone calls asking about our racetrack and what kind of condition it was in,” she said. “And they were very excited to hear that ours was still intact.”

The goal is to relaunch in September with 20 race cards, and applications are already being accepted for onsite stabling and stalls.

MacMillan said there’s some pressure to get it right for everyone in B.C. who cares about horse racing.

“There’s a heavy weight on our shoulders to make sure that we don’t mess this up, but at this point, it’s looking really good,” he said.