From left, Jim Bob Whiteside aboard Yodelin Two, Darlene Braden riding Keys a Don Juan, and Joe Crispin, riding Coker Road, battle down the front straight in the third race of the Crooked River Roundup Race Meet in Prineville on Wednesday night. Crispin and Coker Road won the 512-furlong race.

PRINEVILLE — The Crooked River Roundup Race Meet has something for everybody.

Race organizers estimated a crowd of over 4,000 on Wednesday, the first night of the four-day event.

Spectators were treated to nine races during a beautiful Central Oregon evening at the Crook County Fairgrounds.

“I’ve been coming to this all my life,” said 26-year-old Prineville resident Josh Brown. “It’s pretty good socializing. You get to see people you haven’t seen in a while.”

Brown, who brought his infant daughter Berlyn to her first CRR race, was just the kind of horse fan Doug Smith, the Crooked River Roundup Race Meet director, likes to see at the racetrack.

“That’s what makes this so great,” said Smith, who expects more than 7,000 people to attend Saturday night’s final event. “People come out here and don’t have to gamble. Kids have been out of school for a month and they get to see everybody. It’s almost like a big class reunion.”

For those that did wager on the ponies, jockey Joe Crispin won two of the first three races of the night. Crispin, a Prineville favorite after winning the meet’s top rider award in 2006, won a 250-yard quarter horse trials race on Wink N Kip for the Prineville Futurity Trials in the second race of the night before riding Coker Road to victory in a 5 12 furlong thoroughbred claiming race in race No. 3.

“We came out for a bachelorette party,” said Gloria Stratford, “and I’m up 30 cents.”

With an additional 40 horse stalls built since last year’s races, the 2008 Crooked River Roundup Race Meet has more races and more horses than ever before.

Other than the two preliminary races for the Futurity Trials, which ran five and six horses, respectively, all of Wednesday’s races were scheduled for eight horses. According to Smith, fans can expect all eight gates filled for the rest of the week as well.

“Those 40 stalls we figured we built for $24,000, which was pretty much the cost of materials,” Smith said. “All the labor was volunteered.”

By Smith’s estimate it takes about 100 volunteers a night to pull off Central Oregon’s lone parimutuel horse-race event.

“Everybody you see out here is volunteering,” said Smith. “The people pouring the beer, the people at the ticket windows, even me.”

The races continue today through Saturday with each night’s first race scheduled for 7:15. Admission is $5 for everyone, which includes a race program.

“This facility has really come around,” Smith said about the Crook County Fairgrounds, which also hosts the Crooked River Roundup rodeo. “It’s taken a lot of work for us to get this to where we dreamed it to be.”