Horse racing returns to Central Oregon this week with the Crooked River Roundup pari-mutuel races at the Crook County Fairgrounds in Prineville.

The four-day event starts Wednesday night and runs through Saturday. Eight races are scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday and 10 races for Friday and Saturday.

“Our purses keep growing, which attracts more horses,” says Dean Noyes, the Crooked River Roundup director of racing. “The event grows in success each year, and that always creates more enthusiasm for the horsemen. It’s a big draw. Over the nights of this event we basically replace the population of Prineville. Saturday we’ll have about 3,000 (spectators). It’s a pretty busy place.”

Noyes says the big draw is partially due to the fact that the Crooked River Roundup is the only live event in Central Oregon at which spectators can watch horse racing — and bet on it.

“There’s nowhere else to see this,” Noyes says. “You just don’t do this anywhere else in Central Oregon.”

Over the course of the four nights, the event will include 36 races, with seven to eight horses in each field. The marquee event will be Saturday night’s Jack Rhoden Memorial, a 250-yard quarter horse sprint featuring the weekend’s largest purse, according to Noyes.

Noyes says that the live handle at the Crooked River Roundup — the amount of money wagered each night on site — is one of the largest in Oregon among horse races.

“As far as people right here on the ground and on the track putting their money on the pile, so to speak,” Noyes says, “we do better than most throughout the state.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0318,

mmorical@bendbulletin.com